{"id":329840,"date":"2026-03-14T20:29:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T20:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/329840\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T20:29:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T20:29:27","slug":"basquiats-museum-security-broadway-meltdown-heads-to-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/329840\/","title":{"rendered":"Basquiat\u2019s Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) Heads to Auction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the first time in over a decade, \u201880s art world superstar Jean-Michel Basquiat<\/a>\u2019s seminal painting Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) will be coming before the auctioneer\u2019s gavel as the headline attraction of Sotheby\u2019s spring marquee Contemporary Art sales with an estimate in excess of $45 million. The masterpiece was part of a 12-canvas 1983 series that included Hollywood Africans, now a part of the Whitney Museum of American Art<\/a>\u2019s permanent collection.<\/p>\n

Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) is from the peak of Basquiat\u2019s<\/a> all-too-short career, when he had just become one of the youngest artists ever to participate in the Whitney Biennial. It features his signature graffiti-inspired scrawl, confronting the viewer with jarringly ordinary societal dreads such as \u201cASBESTOS,\u201d \u201cRADIUM,\u201d and \u201cCIGAR\u201d alongside references to law enforcement and the ironies of high art. It has a storied exhibition<\/a> past, having been featured everywhere from Gagosian<\/a> to Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, to a having a central role in the landmark \u201cSigns: Connecting Past and Future,\u201d\u00a0display at Seoul\u2019s Dongdaemun Design Plaza Museum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in over a decade, \u201880s art world superstar Jean-Michel Basquiat\u2019s seminal painting Museum Security…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1628,442,498,499,500,1978,177269,501,156,7594,177270,1767,111,139,69,7928],"class_list":["post-329840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-artist","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-auction","tag-basquiat","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-jean-michel-basquiat","tag-museum-security","tag-new-york","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sothebys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}