Keith Haring's Bathroom

In 1989, nine months before AIDS claimed him at 31, Keith Haring painted one of his most intimate and charged works on the walls of a bathroom at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. The location was deliberate — the bathroom a knowing reference to the sexual cruising of the gay community during the 1980s. The mural was also a commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

By that point, HIV and AIDS had devastated Haring’s community and were consuming the artist himself. He had become a vocal activist for safe sex, but the mural shows no retreat from celebration. His signature bold-lined figures contort in explicit sexual delight, penises and orifices and bodily fluids rendered in the same graphic shorthand that had covered subway cars and city walls. The piece is unambiguously joyful — and its title, Once Upon a Time, adds a layer of melancholy, gesturing toward the years of sexual freedom that preceded the epidemic.

The bathroom has since been converted into a meeting room, but the mural remains — lovingly restored by The Center — still holding its weight in sexual energy regardless of the furniture arrangement.

Location: LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011