Princeton University Art Museum Announces Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction
PRINCETON, NJ – August 24, 2026- The Princeton University Art Museum will present Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction, an exhibition bringing new attention to an often-overlooked aspect of the work of the contemporary American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988): his deep engagement with reproductive media.
Comprising more than sixty works, the exhibition is centered around the artist’s 1984 Blue Ribbon paintings, a series of eleven works not publicly exhibited together for more than three decades. On view in Princeton from October 4, 2026, through January 31, 2027, and then traveling to two other venues, the exhibition takes the visitor into Basquiat’s studio and explores his abiding interest in reproductive techniques such as printmaking and photocopying as a critical component of his practice.
The Blue Ribbon paintings—so called because they feature reproductions of the Pabst Blue Ribbon beer logo and bottle cap—mark Basquiat’s deepest experimentation with reproduction as a material process. These mixed-media compositions combine acrylic paint, oil stick, and screenprint, blurring the boundaries between painting and printmaking. Across eleven large-scale canvases, the paintings reuse the same motifs, including a crowned head, anatomical drawings, and the Pabst logo. Each new iteration of these marks brings forth new meanings; thus, the series ultimately embodies the full range of technical and conceptual strategies Basquiat developed, an element of his practice that has remained largely unexplored until now.
“Jean-Michel Basquiat is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of the late twentieth century, one whose persona as a spontaneous genius has sometimes outstripped close analysis of his deep commitment to painstaking processes in the studio,” said James Steward, Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisseger, Class of 1976, Director of the Princeton University Art Museum. “By centering the Blue Ribbon paintings for the first time in a generation, we invite visitors to form a new and richer understanding of the artist’s talent and open new avenues for future research.”
“For Basquiat, printmaking provided both new creative possibilities and connections to a wider artistic network that hasn’t been explored in previous exhibitions or scholarship,” said exhibition curator Jordana Moore Saggese. “The exhibition will invite visitors to consider Basquiat’s engagement with reproductive media as intrinsically aligned with conceptual questions around identity, reproduction, and language that occupied the artist throughout his brief but prolific career.”
In addition to the Blue Ribbon paintings, the exhibition assembles nearly all of Basquiat’s known print projects. Together these objects highlight his material experimentation with reproductive media, from early photocopy-based works of the late 1970s through lithographs, serigraphs, and screenprints produced in Los Angeles. Beginning with handmade postcards created using a Xerox machine, Basquiat developed an evolving approach that moved fluidly between drawing, print, and painting. Across these processes, printmaking functioned as a generative tool through which Basquiat experimented with collage, often reworking his own imagery across multiple formats.
Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction also places Basquiat’s work in dialogue with a range of artists whose practices informed his approach. It highlights connections to figures such as Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol, whose engagement with reproduction, anatomy, and collage shaped some of Basquiat’s own visual strategies. A highlight of the exhibition is Basquiat’s Tuxedo (1983), a screenprint on canvas composed from multiple original drawings and photographic transfers. Where Warhol appropriated existing images, Basquiat appropriated his own images, reworking his earlier drawings into a new, structured composition that reflects both his debt to Warhol and his departures from him.
Alongside these well-documented influences, the exhibition also brings forward connections to artists whose impact is less known. The inclusion of works by Robert Hamilton Blackburn makes one such lineage tangible. As the first master printer at Universal Limited Art Editions, Blackburn pulled lithographs for Robert Rauschenberg, whose layered, appropriative printmaking Basquiat absorbed. By tracing this line from Blackburn's press through Rauschenberg to Basquiat, the exhibition deepens our understanding of the processes and influences that shaped his work.
The exhibition foregrounds conceptual questions that emerge from Basquiat’s engagement with reproductive media, inviting consideration of meaning, appropriation, identity, and language. Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction offers visitors a new understanding of Basquiat’s practice, positioning reproduction as central to his artistic vision and to the broader conversations that defined the art of the 1980s. The exhibition will be accompanied by a book-length publication and a number of public programs, including a curatorial lecture and an exploration of the work of Robert Hamilton Blackburn.
Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproductionis curated by Jordana Moore Saggese, professor of modern and contemporary American art and director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland. Following its debut at Princeton, the exhibition will travel through 2027, with presentations at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Frist Art Museum in Nashville.
Exhibition Credits
Basquiat, the Blue Ribbon Paintings, and the Art of Reproduction is made possible by leadership support from the Richard C. von Hess Foundation; the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art; and the Princeton University Humanities Council’s David A. Gardner ‘69 Magic Fund.
Additional support is provided by the Bagley Wright, Class of 1946, Fund for Contemporary Art; the Melanie and John Clarke Exhibition Fund; H. Vincent Poor; Lisa Beth Podos; Michael W. Scherb; and the Sara and Joshua Slocum, Class of 1998, Art Museum Fund; and the many generous contributors to the Director’s Exhibition Fund.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Valuation support provided by Christie’s.
The accompanying publication is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund; the Annette Merle-Smith Publications Fund; and the Barr Ferree Foundation Fund for Publications, Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University.
About the Princeton University Art Museum
With a collecting history that extends back to 1755, the Princeton University Art Museum is one of the leading university art museums in the country, featuring collections that have grown to include more than 117,000 works of art ranging from ancient to contemporary art and spanning the globe. Committed to advancing Princeton’s teaching and research missions, the Art Museum also serves as a gateway to the University for visitors from around the world.
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