Saturday Salons: In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Following the Saturday evening performances of In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat, join multi-hyphenate Tony Award nominee Daniel J. Watts (Lights Out! Nat King Cole, The Refuge Plays) in a continued celebration of Basquiat’s life and legacy. With music, spoken-word and his singular practice of painting with his feet while he dances, Daniel and his special guests will bring the party to 4th Street!

The special guests include extraordinary artists Sage Gallon, Ari Grooves, Joan Morgan, Lee Quiñones, Michael Thurber and Tiana Webb-Evans.

LINEUP

9/12 – Ari Grooves and Joan Morgan
9/19 – Ari Grooves and Tiana Webb-Evans
9/26 – Michael Thurber and Sage Gallon
10/3 – Michael Thurber and Lee Quiñones

BIOGRAPHIES

Ari Grooves is a multifaceted artist known for being the “Jack of All Trades!” Along with Broadway, this Lucille Lortel nominee had the privilege to DJ for The 75th Annual Tony Awards Gala in summer 2022, at Lincoln Center and Little Island summer festivals in 2024, and more. Ari is one third of the creative trifecta called S.N.O.B (Sunday Night On Broadway). A social party created by Ari and others, wanting to provide an underground scene for the Broadway/creative community.

Michael Thurber is a Tony-Nominated/Drama Desk winning composer, lyricist and orchestrator. He is the Composer In Residence at The Public Theater. Past productions include Just In Time, Goddess, 12th Night and Romeo & Juliet. He was the original bass player for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Thurber teaches at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute and studied music at Juilliard.

Dr. Joan Morgan is Director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University, an award-winning cultural critic, feminist author and pioneering hip-hop journalist. She coined “hip-hop feminism” in her 1999 book When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, and later wrote She Begat This: 20 Years of the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. She serves on the Board of Trustees for the National YoungArts Foundation. She’s Jamaican-born, South Bronx bred and a proud New Yorker.

Tiana Webb Evans is a cultural producer, writer, and communications professional whose social practice shapes contemporary discourse around art, society, and cultural development. She has conceived and led international initiatives and strategic partnerships across the art, architecture, design, and hospitality sectors, working with institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, Pérez Art Museum Miami, and Faena Art. She is the award-winning producer of The Rhythm of Jamaica Art, which premiered at Cannes, and serves on the Board of Governors of the National Gallery of Jamaica.

Sage Gallon is a New York–based multidisciplinary artist, photographer, poet, filmmaker, and cultural storyteller whose work explores identity, humanity, race, vulnerability, and social justice. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Art Basel, and Dubai. Gallon’s photography and paintings transform personal experience and social observation into emotionally charged visual narratives, establishing him as a distinctive contemporary voice committed to documenting lives, histories, and truths too often unseen.

Lee Quiñones is considered the single most influential artist to emerge from the New York subway art movement. Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1960, Lee painted over 120 whole subways cars and created the first handball court mural in 1978, and then shifted to a studio-based practice. He has had exhibitions at Galleria Medusa, MoMA PS1, Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, Fun Gallery, Barbara Gladstone, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Lisson Gallery, Charlie James, James Fuentes, and Woodbury House. Quiñones’ paintings are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, Perez Art Museum Miami, Groninger Museum, Blanton Museum of Art, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. He starred in Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 film, “Wild Style,” a blueprint for the burgeoning hip hop movement.

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Categories: 2026/27 Season and For The Culture.