APPRAISER: When is a work shirt a work of art?
GUEST: (chuckles) When Keith Haring meets you and wants to draw on it.
APPRAISER: Exactly. So please tell me about this wonderful collection of Keith Haring material.
GUEST: Well, first of all, I'm not hip enough to collect Keith Haring by myself. My daughter, who was a teenager at the time, had a Keith Haring Swatch watch, and she encouraged me to get interested, and I did. He came to Cranbrook in '87, and he stayed about ten days. He was working with the children there. And I was interested, so I should shoot some pictures, so I took my camera and I went. He's an amazing person. He was very generous with the kids. The room that they painted was about 30 feet high by 50 feet by 50 feet. And they kept murals up-- that's what these are. A month later, they painted over it.
APPRAISER: Oh, no!
GUEST: I think everybody regrets that by now, no more so than Keith Haring. He loved the piece.
APPRAISER: Well, it's a wonderful photograph that you took. His foundation is deeply involved in an AIDS cure, as well as taking care of children and educating children. He believed that art should be everywhere, and art should work for a good cause. It's great to see the children in the front row appreciating Keith Haring, because he appreciated children so much.
GUEST: He did.
APPRAISER: He thought that we forgot an awful lot when we grew up.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: And he was also very democratic in that he thought that art was nothing unless it reached every segment of the population.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Keith Haring did a series of subway drawings in the subways of Manhattan. And he did, as you said, watches, and he did small objects that he sold. In addition to these books, you have some wonderful original drawings by Haring. This was a photograph that he added an original drawing to, signed and dated.
GUEST: He was very generous with his autograph and his drawings. Like, for instance, the children, if they had a denim jacket, he would do a drawing on the back, a graphic, and sign it. And everybody had a graphic on, like this. This is all I had, so I just had him do it.
APPRAISER: Well, that's terrific. This book, which was published in an edition size of 2,000, was from his solo exhibit in New York, at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery. And here, again, he augmented his wonderful portrait of himself. So the books themselves are... this book, perhaps $100. This is more rare. The book itself would be, perhaps, $500. But the drawings, the drawings are wonderful. This drawing would be, at auction, between $3,000 and $5,000.
GUEST: That's good.
APPRAISER: This drawing as well, between $3,000 and $5,000. And you put this good work shirt to work. It is a wonderful piece of Keith Haring's art. And that, too, would be between $3,000 and $5,000.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: The collection together I would value at between $12,000 and $18,000.
GUEST: Wow, that's great. I'll never sell it though, so I'll pass it on to my daughter.
