Keith Haring’s Historic Subway Drawings Make Their Auction Debut

In the 1980s, where most subway riders in New York viewed stations as mere stops on their daily commutes, Keith Haring spotted a prime canvas. “I remember noticing a panel in the Times Square station and immediately going aboveground and buying chalk,” the Pennsylvania-born artist later recalled. “After the first drawing, things just fell into place. I began drawing on the subways as a hobby on my way to work. I had to ride the subways often and would do a drawing while waiting for a train.” Over the course of his regrettably short career, Haring decorated the New York subway with hundreds upon hundreds of graffiti drawings. On November 21, 31 of those drawings will be put up for auction for the first time at Sotheby’s New York. Offered up by longtime Haring collector Larry Warsh, they’re collectively expected to fetch a whole lot more than your average piece of street art—somewhere between $6.3 and $6.9 million, to be precise. (Haring’s auction record currently stands at $6.5 million, according to the Artnet Price Database.) Keith Haring, Untitled (Still Alive in ’85). Photo: Sotheby’s. Before these graffiti sketches go under the hammer, they will be put on display at the...