(This particular exhibition was not about street art: no Banksy.) The graffiti story was told from hall to hall, each representing its own era. The big assignment was how to fuse both NY and Dutch graffiti history. The whole team was working 24/7 to get the job done. From then on Mick and the team had twice the space to fill, with only a couple of months before opening. With more material than expected and a slamming story line proposed, Amsterdam Museum decided to expand the exhibition to two floors instead of one, to be able to tell the complete story both from a city historical and art historical perspective. Under the guidance of senior Amsterdam Museum curator Annemarie de Wildt the content and story line were directed. As Mick is part of the graffiti scene since 1983 she knew exactly where to find the right key figures, best protagonists and which important stories had to be told to get an accurate representation of the Amsterdam graffiti scene in these years. Together with a production team provided by the Amsterdam Museum and in close collaboration with Sean Corcoran, the exhibition was created. Mick La Rock, dreaming about the City as Canvas exhibition, was honored and gladly accepted the invitation of being guest curator for the Amsterdam Museum. His quest for a curator brought him to Mick La Rock, who was recommended by the Director of CBK Amsterdam Southeast, the Director of the Amsterdam Street Art Museum and the Director of Imagine IC. To link the NY exhibition to Amsterdam in a historical context, he started researching and rediscovered the rich Amsterdam graffiti scene of the 80’s. Overwhelmed by this incredible exhibition, Paul Spies was determined to bring the rediscovered graffiti collection of Martin Wong (1946 - 1999) to Amsterdam. Right from the start he knew that he could never create an exhibition without understanding the soul of this cultures and its makers. For approximately 9 years Sean bonded with the NY graffiti artists, being sincerely interested in graffiti as cultural heritage and their personal stories. Vital for the creation of City As Canvas was Sean Corcoran, curator of the NY Museum. It started when director Paul Spies of the Amsterdam Museum went to see the exhibition City as Canvas in the Museum of the City of New York, the counterpart of the Amsterdam Museum. The Amsterdam Museum (Amsterdam Historical Museum) showed a large exhibition about the influence of New York graffiti on Amsterdam in the 70’s and 80’s.
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