News “Our Friend, Jean,” an intimate collection from the precipice of the artist’s career explosion, is going on view at The Bishop Gallery starting this weekend. May 12, 2026 — 4 min read One of dozens of portraits Alexis Adler took of Jean-Michel Basquiat when they lived together (photo Alexis Adler, all courtesy The Bishop Gallery unless noted) While thousands will descend upon Manhattan this week for the bulk of New York's spring art fairs, a Brooklyn gallery encourages us to tune out the numbers and trends and spend time with some of the most important samples of contemporary art history ever produced in the city. Opening Saturday, May 16, Our Friend, Jean at The Bishop Gallery is an intimate collection of art and ephemera from the precipice of Jean-Michel Basquiat's career explosion. In a phone call, the gallery's co-founders , Erwin John and Stevenson Dunn Jr., reminded Hyperallergic that they had initially developed and presented Our Friend, Jean at their previous gallery location in 2019 .…