Four Ways To See Beyond Graffiti At The Banksy Museum In New York

Tucked away in the middle of a busier-than-ever stretch of Canal Street in New York's Chinatown, where the sidewalks are lined with aggressive designer street vendors, the exterior of the Banksy Museum doesn't foreshadow what's inside.

The first Banksy Museum in the United States, after popular mountings in Paris, Barcelona, ​​Krakow and Brussels, it shows more than 160 recreations, by other anonymous street artists, of Banksy's extensive work. The even larger collection of life-size Banksy recreations in a single space spans the top two floors spanning 15,000 square feet in the three-story Renaissance-style commercial building designed by David M. Oltarsh. It opened in 1927 as the Teatre Major, with a capacity for 599 spectators, surrounded by commercial spaces and attics, and two decades later the cinema was renamed Teatre Giglio-Major., due to its proximity to Little Italy. In 1971, it became known as the Canal Cinema Theatre, catering to new immigrants from the Far East with films from China. The multicultural reuse of the building gives the breadth of Banksy's work around the world.

An immersive journey into the world of Banksy costs $30, with discounts for students, teachers and seniors ($26); groups, families, military personnel, children 6-12 ($21); and free entry for children under 6. The five museums are the brainchild of Hazis Vardar from Belgium, who together with his brothers, Alil and Hamdi, opened a nightclub called Palace in Paris in 2017.

Whether you've traveled the world in search of Banksy's boldest and most brash work, or are intrigued by his elusiveness, you're likely to expand your understanding and appreciation of his work across mediums and subjects.

Here are four ways to navigate your look at the Banksy Museum in New York:

Stencil art collides with graffiti

Stencil art is sometimes maligned by more traditional graffiti artists, but Banksy's approach transcends the typical to become its own hybrid art form. Over two decades ago, Banksy began to move from freehand spray painting to using stencils to create dynamic images that challenge the viewer's perception of the flat wall.

In February 2011, a week before the Oscars that year Departure for The Gift Shop was nominated in the category of best documentary, Banksy took to the streets of Los Angeles, armed with a series of murals.

The menacing nature of a boy brandishing an automatic rifle is subverted by colored pencils emerging from the magazine, against a playful background with a radiating yellow sun, multicolored flowers and green grass, rendered with childlike charm.

Child Soldieralso known as Crayon Boythat occupied the wall of an Urban Outfitters in Westwood, Los Angeles, was quickly vandalized with paint, further advancing the dialogue of war and peace.

While unlikely to be a Banksy inspiration, the boy figure reminds me of Flyora (played by Russian actor Aleksei Yevgenyevich Kravchenko), the Belarusian boy who unearths an abandoned SVT-40 rifle from a sand trench to join Soviet partisan forces a come seethe 1985 Soviet-Belarusian anti-war film directed by Elem Klimov.

Installation of mixed media self-referential

In 2003, Banksy introduced an investment of Stop and search, empowering the girl who is being searched by the police officer as she stares at the wall, unarmed and with her arms raised. While the original in Jerusalem revealed its location with a road sign, this version is installed with a stop sign emblazoned with three military drones that first appeared last year in south London . Here, the signpost is covered in vines, fertilizing hope for the message, which called for a ceasefire in Gaza. The mix of these images highlights the escalation in the Middle East over the past two decades.

The indictment of violence and hatred is amplified by the two cherubs trying to pull apart the West Bank separation wall with a lever at the top right of the screen. The original in 2017 ran alongside a Christmas message of “Peace on Earth*” in italics, above the proviso “*Terms and conditions apply,” warning that a cheery holiday greeting is not enough The asterisk after “Earth” evokes the Star of Bethlehem, which originally appeared in the Gospel of St. Matthew and has since been commodified into the soulless celebration of consumerism.

Beneath the self-referential layout are a number of discarded objects, such as a suitcase and a shoe, strewn across a gritty surface of sand and construction debris.

Check out the Walled Off Hotel

We experience a visceral, intimate, atmospheric and controversial look at the West Bank. Towards the end of the exhibition, guided by blue arrows on the floor, we enter a room in the boutique hotel in Bethlehem, designed in 2017 as a temporary exhibition called Walled Off Hotel, which is based on the Waldorf chain. Located across from the part of Israel's West Bank barrier that separates Bethlehem from the holy site of Rachel's Tomb, it was a popular tourist site until it was temporarily closed last year due to the war.

The project, which followed Banksy's Dismaland in 2015 in Weston-Super-Mare, south-west England, has sparked a myriad of emotions. I imagine Morrissey's Every day is like Sunday playing on a loop over the five weeks emerging in England, criticizing English seaside towns in the 21st century. The Walled Off Hotel is clearly an emotional upswing at a geopolitical level.

Consider The Canvas

Although he is known for transforming the street walls of thousands of nations, Banksy also paints on canvas. Although these works, with examples scattered throughout the museum, adhere to the tenets of the studio, they convey a message as powerful as their unabashed social commentary.

Excluded from the Venice Biennale in 2019, Banksy set up a stall in St. Mark's Square showing his Venice in oil paintings, reacting to frivolous tourism. The nine framed paintings of varying sizes create a narrative punctuated by easels, a folding beach chair and a hand-scribbled sign with the series title.

The collective auction world's jaw dropped in October 2021 when a shredder was built inside Banksy's frame. Love is in the trash was activated following the completion of the £18.6 million ($25.3 million) sale at Sotheby's, with proceeds benefiting a UK charity.

Fewer may be familiar with Banksy's more subtle auction moments, such as the sale of a triptych for £2.2 million. Views of the Mediterranean Sea 2017in July 2020 at Sotheby's, raising money for a hospital in Bethlehem.

The presence of paintings alongside reimagined street murals speaks to the fungibility of the canvas.

“If we just stuck Banksy's work in gold frames on a wall, that would contradict everything that Banksy's art stands for,” Vardar said.