Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) will open Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols on 25th June, bringing together nearly a dozen major works by Jean-Michel Basquiat in a rare exhibition that places some of the artist’s most recognisable paintings under one roof for the first time.
Opening as Miami welcomes visitors from around the world for the FIFA World Cup, the exhibition draws exclusively from the collection of Kenneth C. Griffin and offers an opportunity to encounter Basquiat’s work beyond its status as cultural shorthand, market phenomenon or art-world icon.
Co-curated by PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans and Kenneth C. Griffin Collection Curator Megan Kincaid, the exhibition centres on Basquiat’s distinctive visual language of figures, symbols, text and layered references. Through works created during the artist’s breakthrough years of the early 1980s, visitors are invited to explore the themes of race, identity, power, religion and history that run throughout his practice.
Highlights include Untitled (1982), one of Basquiat’s most celebrated explorations of the human head; In Italian (1983), a densely layered composition that operates simultaneously as portrait, linguistic puzzle and autobiographical document; Pez Dispenser (1984), which reimagines the familiar candy dispenser through Basquiat’s uniquely playful and critical lens; and Untitled (Tenant) (1982), where a skeletal figure becomes a powerful vehicle for examining social and historical forces.
Born in Brooklyn to a Puerto Rican mother and Haitian father, Basquiat drew deeply from Caribbean, African American and global histories. Those influences resonate strongly in Miami, a city shaped by migration, diaspora and cultural exchange, making PAMM a particularly fitting setting for the exhibition.
“At PAMM, this exhibition feels both inevitable and vital,”
said Franklin Sirmans.
“Miami’s layered histories, diasporic communities, and global outlook create a context where Basquiat’s visual language—rooted in memory, migration, and cultural hybridity—can be experienced with particular depth and immediacy.”
Sirmans, who has spent decades studying and exhibiting Basquiat’s work, added that the exhibition offers audiences the chance to reconsider the artist
“not as a market phenomenon or pop icon, but as a rigorous, self-taught master of painting and form.”
Megan Kincaid said the exhibition reveals how Basquiat built meaning through layers of imagery and reference.
“The works move between art history and contemporary culture, using humor and critique to reflect on mythmaking, socio-historical forces, and power—ultimately inviting viewers to look closely, sensemake, and think together.”
The exhibition marks the latest chapter in Sirmans’ long engagement with Basquiat, following his involvement with the artist’s 1992 Whitney retrospective and the landmark 2005 Brooklyn Museum exhibition. It also builds on PAMM’s 2016 presentation of Basquiat’s notebooks and works on paper.
By bringing together a concentrated group of major paintings rarely seen in depth, Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols offers a timely opportunity to revisit one of the most influential artists of the late twentieth century through the work itself.
Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols, June 25th, 2026 – June 6th, 2027, Pérez Art Museum Miami
