Basquiat ex-girlfriend's huge collection of his art/archives

In 1979, starving artist Jean-Michel Basquiat painted murals all over the walls of his biology student girlfriend Alexis Adler’s apartment in New York City’s East Village. The couple split up around 1980 but Adler held on to the apartment and eventually bought it. She had left Basquiat’s wall art alone and also kept piles of his work, from notebooks to photos to drawings. Adler, a New York University embryologist, is now working with a team of experts to catalog the chaotic collection for an upcoming book, exhibition, and, of course, a sale. According to Artinfo, one of the contributors to the effort, Gracie Mansion gallery director Sur Rodney Sur “credits Basquiat’s sometime depiction of scientific formulas and compounds to his time with Adler, who was a biology student in those days. He said Basquiat was fascinated by her textbooks and copied much of the imagery.” Basquiat’s Ex-Girlfriend Reveals Major Trove of Unseen Works” (via Science Sparks Art)