Exploring the Newly Renamed NYC Street Honoring Basquiat
A New York City street lined with boutique stores, galleries, a bustling fire station, and a multi-story parking lot is now named after Jean-Michel Basquiat. On Tuesday, October 21, City Council and the Basquiat Estate officially designated a stretch of Great Jones Street in Lower Manhattan in honor of the late artist.
Basquiat resided and worked at 57 Great Jones Street in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood in a warehouse leased from fellow artist Andy Warhol for five years before he died of an overdose in 1988 at the age of 27. The street naming is a recognition of the “visionary Black artist who helped redefine modern art through his bold, expressive, and socially conscious work,” a City Council press release said.
Rather than replacing the previous street name, the city added a third sign for “Jean-Michel Basquiat Way” at the intersection of Bowery and Great Jones in what it called a “co-naming.”
57 Great Jones Street is now home to Atelier Jolie.
The city added a third sign to the intersection of Bowery and Great Jones.
Born to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother in Brooklyn, Basquiat was already gaining traction in the art world by his early 20s, breaking through in the early 1980s with characteristic works that depicted human heads and elements of graffiti. In 1978, he sold a hand-painted postcard to Warhol after approaching the artist in a SoHo restaurant, and later moved into Warhol’s NoHo building. During his about decade-long career, Basquiat produced an estimated 2,000 drawings and 1,000 paintings, selling posthumously for up to $110.5 million.
“He was a cultural pioneer who expanded the public’s relationship with and access to art,” City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a press release shared with Hyperallergic. “Throughout his career, Jean Michel-Basquiat pushed boundaries to inspire critical conversations about power, racial, and social justice that persist today.”
A plaque on 57 Great Jones Street recognizes Basquiat’s time in the building and contributions to the art world.
At a ceremony on Tuesday, Basquiat’s relatives, including his sister Lisane Basquiat and nephew Raymond Joseph Basquiat, celebrated the new street name.
“I feel like he changed the culture,” Raymond Joseph told ABC 7. Lisane, who administers the artist’s estate alongside her sister Jeanine Heriveaux, told the news outlet her brother would “feel so acknowledged and honored.”
Since actress Angelina Jolie acquired the building in 2023, 57 Great Jones Street has been home to Atelier Jolie, an art center that hosts residencies and exhibitions, and Eat Offbeat Café, a restaurant that employs immigrant and refugee chefs.
A plaque already exists on the building, covered in graffiti. “Basquiat’s paintings and other work challenged established notions of high and low art, race and class, while forging a visionary language that defied characterization,” it reads.
Atelier Jolie