Things Left Undone: Keith Haring and the Artists’ Mark

In celebration of Keith Haring: Radiant Vision, the CMA welcomes artist and USC assistant professor of painting Megan Bickel for a lecture on the manifestation of visual language across painterly practices. Some artists, including Keith Haring, are well known for their use and reuse of certain images — like Haring’s iconic barking dog or radiant baby — and in many cases those images have become synonymous with their work. In the context of street and protest art, the use of symbol repetition plays a vital role in the artists’ promoting or sharing of ideas that, while sometimes subversive, can easily be digested by the viewer. Join Bickel in the theater for an exploration of those ideas and more during this Sunday afternoon talk. Q&A to follow. Free with membership or admission.

Megan Bickel is an artist, writer, digital humanist, and educator working out of Louisville, Kentucky. Their work considers and utilizes various approaches and technologies such as painting, data manipulation, digital collage, and poetry to assess power, world-building, and the construction of “utopias.” Bickel’s work has been exhibited in artist-run, commercial, and museum spaces nationally and internationally. Reviews or mentions of their work have appeared in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Ruckus, NewCity, and others. She is the recipient of the Great Meadows Professional Development Grant (2024). She was the founder and organizer of houseguest gallery (2018–2025), where works by emerging and underserved artists and curators were shown. They’ve had arts criticism, science fiction, and images published in Burnaway, Anarchist Review of Books, Sixty-Inches-from-Center, Ruckus, and others. Bickel is an assistant professor of painting at the University of South Carolina School of Visual Art, co-director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Greenville, and an analyst at Regionalist Data Studio. She is also a gardener, avid napper, lazy power lifter, proud dog and cat mom, and cycling advocate.

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