Graffiti as art at the Centraal Museum
Since 10 October the Centraal Museum in Utrecht has been showing how graffiti shaped contemporary art: more than 120 works by about 70 artists, among them Basquiat and Keith Haring.
The Centraal Museum in the former Agnietenklooster in Utrecht.
It is seventy-five years since the spray can was invented. The Centraal Museum in Utrecht takes that as the occasion for Graffiti, an exhibition running from 10 October 2026 to 29 March 2027. The museum shows graffiti not as a stand-alone art form but as part of a broader development in art.
The exhibition traces how graffiti, which began among young people in New York, influenced contemporary art. It also looks at how contemporary artists have explored and extended the visual language of graffiti. In total, more than 120 works by about 70 artists, spread over seventy years, are on show.
The artists include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Dondi White, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, Rammellzee, Martin Wong and Yayoi Kusama. Also on view are Dan Christensen's O and the readymade bins and electrical boxes by Klara Lidén. Josephine Pryde is represented with New Media Express, a model train covered in miniature graffiti that visitors can ride.
Henny Overbeek makes Art Happens (Together), an installation in which visitors take part and which grows during the exhibition. There are also presentations on early Dutch graffiti history. Parts of the exhibition were made with Creative Lab Utrecht, the Dutch Graffiti Library and Mick La Rock.
The exhibition originated at Museion in Bolzano and was developed further with the Centraal Museum. The curators are Catrien Schreuder, Leonie Radine and Ned Vena. There is a photography workshop (Photo Tag), a graffiti workshop with High on Type and a screening of Chantal Akerman's News from Home.
In the Annex, the last room of the old stables of the former Agnietenklooster, hangs a film installation by Karimah Ashadu. In MUSCLE (2025) she follows bodybuilders who train in an improvised gym in the slums of Lagos. The film examines how the Black male body is looked at and portrayed, without falling into stereotypes. Bodybuilding appears in it as a way of forming an identity and of determining how others see you, much like graffiti writers who build their own image. The Annex shows contemporary art that responds to the main exhibition. A large solo exhibition by Ashadu, FLUID, runs from 24 October 2026 to 11 April 2027 at KM21 in The Hague.
Graffiti is on view in De Stallen, the museum's largest exhibition space, at Agnietenstraat 1. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00 to 17:00. On the plinth on Stationsplein, Save the World (2017) by Anne de Vries has stood since 2 November as part of the Podium Centraal programme: an eight-metre-high sculpture that looks like a bare old tree from a distance and turns out to be made of plastic up close. Elsewhere in the museum, Godenschemering by Frans Franciscus (until 22 November), Blik op bloemen (until 13 December) and Raamwerk Wineke Gartz, which began on 10 October, are also on view.
Practical information
Exhibition: Graffiti, De Stallen, Centraal Museum
Runs: 10 October 2026 to 29 March 2027
Address: Agnietenstraat 1, 3512 XA Utrecht
Open: Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00–17:00
Tickets: via tickets.centraalmuseum.nl