T he story of how Keith Haring came to paint a crib began on a quiet, ordinary afternoon in 1986. His best friend’s wife was pregnant, and the couple didn’t have the money to buy a new crib for their home in New York City’s Greenpoint neighborhood. “I called my parents to ask if my old crib was still in the attic,” says artist Kermit Oswald, Haring’s friend since childhood. “I got it and I painted it yellow, then Keith came over, we had a few beers and he painted the rest of it.” Haring is famed as an enduring, globally recognized celebrant of Aids activism, nightlife and the New York Bohemian scene of the 1980s. But he honored his connection with his straight best friend even as he rubbed shoulders with Andy Warhol , Robert Mapplethorpe and Jean-Michel Basquiat . Oswald’s collection of Haring’s work is now on display in Haring’s House: Works From the Collection of Kermit Oswald , a public exhibition at Sotheby’s New York this month, with the works going to auction in two sales on 14 and 15 May.…