NEW YORK, NY.- The New Museum today announced a major gift from the estate of Richard Hambleton, which at the late artist’s request will support arts education programs for young people. A longtime Lower East Side resident and advocate for New York’s artistic community, this generous gift will expand access to contemporary art, creative learning, and art-making resources for the next generation of museum audiences across New York City and beyond.

A central figure of New York’s downtown art scene, Richard Hambleton was a conceptual artist who lived and worked in Manhattan from the late 1970s until his death in 2017. Hambleton was best known for his street art, particularly his spontaneously placed graffiti works with imagery reminiscent of crime scenes, from silhouettes of exploding men to chalk-body outlines, peppered across Manhattan. At the New Museum, his work was featured in the landmark 2004 exhibition East Village USA, which recounted the history of the East Village throughout the 1980s as a home for experimentation and counterculture.

“When I was a young kid in Italy, the work of Richard Hambleton simply changed my life,” said Massimiliano Gioni, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum. “Along with A-One, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Crash, Keith Haring, Lady Pink, Lee Quiñones, Rammellzee, and many others, Hambleton was featured in Arte di Frontiera, a seminal graffiti art show that opened in Bologna in 1984. I spent hours reading my secondhand copy of the exhibition’s catalog. It is a true honor to celebrate Hambleton’s memory with this gift, and it is particularly fitting that it will go to supporting our education programs, which continue to inspire teens and families within and beyond the walls of the New Museum. We are extremely thankful to the late Richard Hambleton and his estate for their generous support, which will help many different communities engage with contemporary art for years to come.”

“Richard Hambleton was devoted to introducing new generations to contemporary art, and we are proud to honor his legacy by supporting the New Museum’s youth programs,” said Brian Kelly (known professionally as Brian Vincent), executor of the Estate of Richard Hambleton. “Hambleton’s relationship with the Museum goes back decades, and we hope that this gift will ensure that young people will engage with and experience the transformative possibilities of creative learning through the Museum’s crucial, public-serving work.”

As a vital civic space for dialogue, the New Museum organizes timely public programs year-round, including workshops, residencies, performances, panel discussions, resource fairs, and community gatherings, as well as numerous education programs delivered at the Museum, at New York City public schools, and at partner sites in the Lower East Side and across the city. Some of these initiatives include the NewMu Teen Fellowship, a two-year, intensive after-school program for public high school students, as well as the Bowery Art Space, a free, monthly drop-in program for teens.