Shepard Fairey Chosen as Last to Exhibit at Deitch Projects

By Steve Delahoyde on January 21, 2010 9:00 AM

Now that Jeffrey Deitch has been named the new director at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, he has just a few months left before he’s likely to close up shop on his famed New York gallery, Deitch Projects, to absolve himself of any conflicts of interest. And he’s decided to let the space go out in a blaze of high-profile glory with the announcement that Shepard Fairey will be the last artist to exhibit there (at least under his command — he may still hand off the gallery to someone else). Art Info reports that Fairey’s show will go up on May 1st, just a month before Deitch’s takeover in L.A. Here’s a bit about the planned exhibit:

Fairey said the focus of the show will be portraits of “trailblazers in areas of art and culture who I care about,” from Woodie Guthrie and Debbie Harry to the Dali Lama and Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

There will also be several large-scale murals in the space and outdoors as well, which should please fans of Fairey’s rawer street work. “I have a couple of sanctioned spots already mapped out where I can do some nice pieces,” said the artist, who is regularly hit with vandalism charges and was arrested in 2008 while arriving at the opening of his ICA Boston survey. “I have to be careful because I’m still on probation, but we’ll see what other opportunities present themselves.”