A painting that sold for more than $100 million in 2020 is coming to Raleigh, and it's bringing along the street artist who answered it. The North Carolina Museum of Art will open Basquiat x Banksy in its East Building on Nov. 22, running through May 30, 2027, with free admission for everyone who walks in.
The exhibit pairs Jean-Michel Basquiat's 1982 painting Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump with Banksy's response piece, Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search, according to the News & Observer. Basquiat's original shows a Black boy and dog playing in the spray of a fire hydrant, sometimes called a johnnypump, while Banksy's version depicts the same boy and dog being searched by police. The show arrives in Raleigh as part of a national tour that brought the two works from the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., per the North Carolina Museum of Art.
NCMA notes this marks the first time Banksy's work has been exhibited at the museum, and only the second time a Basquiat piece has traveled there since the 2011 exhibition 30 Americans. The two works were displayed together at the Hirshhorn for two years, the paper reports, before making their way south.
What the Pairing Is Meant to Reveal
The Hirshhorn has said the exhibition focuses on Basquiat's representation of a Black boy and his dog at play alongside Banksy's reply, and that Banksy's composition highlights the racial and social inequities that pervaded Basquiat's life as well as recurrent themes in his work, according to the station's report of the museum's framing. NCMA Interim Director and CEO Katherine White said the show brings together two works and invites visitors to consider identity, power and popular culture. “The show invites visitors to make connections between two artists whose ideas and artwork have shaped contemporary visual culture while exploring questions of identity, power and popular culture,” White said, per the same account.
There are two versions of Banksy's piece: Smithsonian Magazine distinguishes the 2017 Barbican Centre wall mural from a 2018 wood-panel version of Banksquiat.
A Duke Professor Weighs In Next Month
Raleigh audiences will get an academic take on the pairing when Duke University professor Richard Powell delivers a lecture on Basquiat at 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 2 at the SECU Auditorium in the East Building, the newspaper notes. Powell previously gave a related lecture during the exhibition's run at the Hirshhorn, where it was held in the Ring Auditorium, according to a Smithsonian Institution release announcing that earlier talk.
The Hirshhorn run itself included more than just the two headline paintings. The Smithsonian Institution's release describes 20 small works on paper and wood by Basquiat, drawn from the collection of Larry Warsh and made between 1979 and 1985. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden also presented the film Downtown 81, shot in 1980 and 1981 but not released until 2000, as part of the same showing.
The Smithsonian Institution's own release states the show ran from Sept. 29 through Oct. 26, 2025, while Smithsonian Magazine describes the run as stretching from Sept. 29, 2024, to Oct. 26, 2025. The exhibition is headed to Raleigh, bringing a first-of-its-kind Banksy showing and a rare second visit from Basquiat to the Triangle.
