Keith Haring Subway Drawings: The Evidence Behind the Chalk What buyers should ask before mistaking a low price for a bargain By Alejandro E. Trimper This post first appeared on March 19, 2026, as a republication of my article originally published by InCollect. The present version has been completely rewritten and provides a different perspective on how Keith Haring subway drawings should be evaluated, documented, and acquired. The most important thing I have learned from collecting Keith Haring subway drawings is that owning many examples does not make me qualified to authenticate them. It makes me knowledgeable enough to understand why I should never be the only person involved in deciding whether a work is right. That lesson changed how I collect, how I sell, and how I talk about expertise. The art world often confuses access with authority. Experience can sharpen judgment and teach us how to properly preserve valuable history, but it does not, by itself, create a metho...
What a Certificate of Authenticity Should Actually Tell You A buyer’s guide to evaluating the document, the process behind it, and the right questions to ask before you buy. by Alejandro E Trimper Not long ago, in an essay on Collecting Keith Haring's subway drawings published in Incollect Magazine, I made what I thought was a passing observation: a Certificate of Authenticity should not be treated as proof simply because it uses the word "certificate" . That sentence did quiet work in my inbox. Collectors wrote asking what their own certificates were actually worth. Dealers wrote asking where I drew the line between seller documentation and authentication. Galleries wrote about how often serious documentation gets reduced to a single piece of paper. New buyers, more than anyone, asked the simplest and most important question of all: how do I know what I am holding? I'll preface this by saying YES, I know some of this will be repetitive. It's not because I like ...