Miami Museum of Graffiti: The Voice of the Movement

Much more than just an exhibition space, this one-of-a-kind museum aims to be a place that celebrates artists and educates visitors about the history of authentic graffiti.

Wynwood, a former industrial district in Miami Beach that has been transformed into an open-air gallery by countless graffiti artists, now attracts millions of urban art enthusiasts. It’s the perfect place to open a museum dedicated not to street art, but specifically to graffiti, as explained by Alan Ket, who co-founded the institution with Alison Freidin and was introduced to us by his friend The Real Kay One.

You’re a true child of graffiti…
I’m from Brooklyn, and back in the 1980s, graffiti was everywhere: on the streets, on trains, in parks… like comic books on the walls. I started tagging at 16—which was already pretty late in New York!—with small crews like AOK (All Out Kings in Manhattan), RIS (Rockin’ It Suckers in Queens and Brooklyn), and the SV (Subway Vandals in the Bronx). From 1987 to 1993, I ate graffiti, I breathed graffiti, I lived graffiti. In 1994, I was 23, and my daughter was born. I then became a responsible adult and stopped painting… Faced with REAS—whose real name is Todd James—or Ghost, artists with an incredibly fluid style, I realized I didn’t have any real talent.

But you didn’t stray far from the movement…
I was studying journalism in college and was passionate about graffiti and, more broadly, hip-hop and rap. I realized that urban cultures were being lived but not being told. So I created a magazine dedicated to them, Stress, with a Spanish-language edition titled Hip-Hop Nation. What I wanted was to tell stories that weren’t being told. We’d put Jay-Z or Eminem on the cover for the general public, and inside, we’d talk about the Lowlife crew, Phase 2, or Tracy 168! It worked really well for six years. After that, I published and wrote biographies of graffiti artists and books on graffiti like Graffiti Planet, Street Art, and Graffiti Tattoo. I wasn’t a graffiti artist anymore, but I had become an advocate for the movement.

How did you come up with the idea of starting a museum?
It was in 2006 or 2007. While working in the fashion and video industries, I opened doors for artists like Futura, Kaws, and JonOne… for major projects. At the same time, the city sued me for painting trains! Since I was well-known, the whole thing blew up into a huge deal. To pay my lawyers and court costs, I asked my artist friends to give me canvases, which I put up for sale. It worked out very well, and I was then recognized as someone capable of organizing major exhibitions. I went on to work in Paris with the Fondation Cartier on the “Born in the Street” event. But I realized just how little institutions really cared about graffiti and those who kept it alive. I concluded that the only way for artists to get the respect they deserved was for the movement to have its own museum… even if it was crazy. Since then, we’ve organized about thirty themed group exhibitions and solo shows.

Isn’t it paradoxical to have a museum dedicated to street art?
Some might think so… and say so. But that fails to grasp that, while graffiti belongs to the streets, to walls, to trains…, it’s important to tell its story and offer artists a place where they can talk about their work. The pioneers of the movement are in their 60s or 70s and are no longer active. The museum is the place to honor them, trace their journey, and educate the public. It’s important that the millions of people who come to Wynwood can also learn more about the artists and the movement. We must take responsibility for our own history and our own way of telling it.

Do you place a lot of importance on your independence?
Yes! Today, many museums rely on public funding, but what happens when the subsidies stop? They close their doors. We want to stay open! Especially since the government has never been a friend to graffiti artists. It would be contradictory for the very people who wanted to put us in jail to support us. Currently, the government is anti-progressive and anti-culture, but that doesn’t affect us. We pay our 20 employees every week because our funding doesn’t depend on the government but on ticket sales, the gift shop, the events we organize, and our private partners.

Isn’t it difficult to work with companies?
There’s no magic formula—the money has to come from somewhere! Our private partners believe in our vision, and we use their funds to do good work. It can sometimes take a while to convince them, but the longer we’ve been around, the more progress we make, and the more people understand what we’re doing—namely, establishing this movement within the broader history of art—and want to support us.

Must-see:
Miami Museum of Graffiti
Open daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
276 NW 26th St, Miami, FL 33127, United States
museumofgraffiti.com
Instagram: @museumofgraffiti