Children Revisit an Unrealized Keith Haring Project Through a Public Workshop in Hiroshima

Hiroshima, Japan — In November 2025, the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection organized Drawing Peace with Keith Haring, a three-day public workshop in Hiroshima that invited children to engage with an unresolved moment in Keith Haring’s artistic history.

The workshop took place at Hiroshima Gate Park, directly across from the Atomic Bomb Dome. It emerged from research begun in 2023 into Haring’s 1988 visit to Hiroshima, when he traveled to the city after designing the main visual for HIROSHIMA ’88, a charity concert supporting a care facility for atomic bomb survivors. Haring intended to realize a mural project in Hiroshima, but the plan remained unfinished following his AIDS diagnosis shortly after his trip to Hiroshima and death in 1990.

Rather than attempting to reconstruct or symbolically complete that unrealized project, the workshop proposed a different approach. Children were invited to draw pairs of birds inspired by Haring’s Hiroshima concert birds, with each pair reflecting the child’s own interpretation of peace. Participants were not asked to agree on a definition of peace or to align their visual language. Each contribution was made independently.

Approximately 250 children took part over three days. Participants included local residents of Hiroshima, families visiting from other parts of Japan, children connected to the nearby U.S. Marine base, and international visitors passing through the Peace Park area. As individual drawings accumulated, they formed a single shared surface. While each image remained distinct, the completed banner revealed an unintentional togetherness shaped by coexistence rather than consensus.

The resulting banner measures approximately 8 by 18 feet (2.4 by 5.4 meters). Its status remains intentionally unresolved. It is neither a finished artwork nor a permanent monument, but a provisional object that reflects how many individual visions of peace can exist side by side.

Situated in Hiroshima, a city shaped by unprecedented destruction, the workshop inevitably carried historical and ethical weight. Without prescribing a message, the act of collectively returning to the idea of peace in this location served as a quiet reminder of the necessity of remembering the past and resisting its repetition.

The Nakamura Keith Haring Collection has released a short video introducing the workshop and its context, presenting the project as part of an ongoing effort to engage with Haring’s relationship to Hiroshima as an open question rather than a closed narrative.

About the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection
Founded in 2007 in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection is the world’s only museum dedicated exclusively to Keith Haring. Through research, exhibitions, and education, the museum works with Haring’s art in relation to both the historical conditions in which it was made and the social issues that remain urgent today.

Press Contact
Nakamura Keith Haring Collection
pr_nkhc@keith.jp