At PAMM’s 2024 annual gala, Jorge Pérez raised a glass to Ken Griffin and noted, pointedly, that the museum still had “a lot of empty walls” where Griffin’s Basquiats “would look so beautiful.” About 19 months later, they do, in a freshly christened Kenneth C. Griffin Gallery.
Drawn entirely from the collection of Palm Beacher Ken Griffin, whose real estate holdings Michael Gross examined at length for PALMER’s Vol. 10, the exhibition brings together nine paintings and a major sculpture, which have rarely been seen publicly and several of which are considered to be among the artist’s defining works.
Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, acquired the works over the past few years for roughly $500 million. Among them is the most expensive Basquiat ever sold at auction: Untitled (1982), a screaming skull that went for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2017 to Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa. Griffin bought it from Maezawa privately, for an undisclosed price.
“I am proud to partner with PAMM to present some of the greatest works by one of America’s most iconic artists,” Griffin said. “Basquiat’s art has a unique power to connect across communities and generations.”
The works span some of Basquiat’s most enduring preoccupations. Untitled (1982) returns to the human skull, his most persistent motif. In Italian (1983) layers portraiture, linguistics, and Renaissance anatomical study into a single dense composition. Pez Dispenser (1984) turns Pop Art inside out. Untitled (Tenant) (1982) places a skeletal figure against a field of statistics, collapsing the personal and the political into one charged image. Together, they make the case that Basquiat deserves to be understood not as a market phenomenon, though he is certainly that, but as a rigorous, thoughtful, and restless painter.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, In Italian, 1983. Kenneth C. Griffin Collection. Artwork © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.
For PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans, who co-curated the exhibition with Megan Kincaid, curator of the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection, Miami is a particularly resonant setting. Sirmans, who also organized Basquiat’s landmark retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2005 and has spent decades studying the artist, sees Miami as a natural place to revisit his work, especially as the city welcomes visitors from around the world during the FIFA World Cup. Basquiat’s Puerto Rican and Haitian heritage, together with his engagement with migration, race, and cultural identity, finds a natural dialogue with South Florida’s own communities and histories.
And if you are not making your way back to the sunshine state before Palm Beach season, do not worry. Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols is on view at Pérez Art Museum Miami through June 6, 2027.
Ken Griffin
Megan Kincaid, Franklin Sirmans, Jeanine Heriveaux, Ken Griffin and Lisane Basquiat
Installation view: Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols, Pérez Art Museum Miami, 2026. Kenneth C. Griffin Collection. Artwork © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo: Lazaro Llanes
Franklin Sirmans and Ken Griffin
