January 9, 2006 -  Keith Haring: Journey of the Radiant Baby is the lavish, oversized, catalogue for the landmark exhibition which opens February 18, 2006, at the Reading Public Museum. The catalog and exhibition explore Haring''s brilliant co-opting of youth and pop culture imagery, from Disney characters to his Radiant Baby icon, and includes some of his most compelling and iconic work, including tarps, sculpture, furniture and paintings. Keith Haring remains one of the most popular and controversial artists of the late Twentieth century. His art, social activism and charismatic personality fueled his meteoric rise to celebrity status and reshaped the art world in the 1980s. This catalog and exhibition document for the first time the unique body of work Haring completed through extraordinary collaborations with young friends and artists such as LA II, Kenny Scharf, Sean Kalish, Zena Scharf, Sean Lennon and Nina Clemente. Also captured here are some of his most memorable public art projects, including the Chicago Mural Project and the Statue of Liberty CityKids banner in New York City. Produced by Bunker Hill Publishing, the catalogue contains many full-color examples of Haring''s work as well as essays and comments from contributors M. Rachael Arauz, Ph.D., a Boston-based independent curator, Jonathan Weinberg, painter and historian and Ronald C. Roth, Director and CEO of the Reading Public Museum.  Keith Haring: Journey of the Radiant Baby documents for the first time the unique body of work Haring completed through extraordinary collaborations with young friends and artists such as LA II, Kenny Scharf, Sean Kalish, Zena Scharf, Sean Lennon, and Nina Clemente. Also captured here are some of Haring''s most memorable public art projects, including the Chicago Mural Project and the Statue of Liberty CityKids banner in New York City. In their essays, scholars Rachael Arauz and Jonathan Weinberg provide new insights into Haring''s work. Dr. Arauz, exhibition co-curator, examines the transformation of the Radiant Baby icon throughout Haring''s career, and Dr. Weinberg examines the East Village club scene and its critical impact on the direction of Haring''s work. Exhibition co-curator Ron Roth examines Haring''s ardent social activism and utilization of the potential of art to enlarge public support and involvement in a variety of charitable causes, one of the definitive contributions of Haring''s work. Keith Haring: Journey of the Radiant Baby is the lavish, oversized catalog for the landmark exhibition at the Reading Public Museum, Reading, PA, co-curated by Ron Roth and Rachael Arauz. Founded in 1904, The Reading Public Museum is one of America''s oldest museums, and a pioneer and national leader in Museum Education. For over a century, the museum has played an important part in the cultural vitality of the mid-Atlantic region. Accredited with the American Association of Museums, it holds extensive collections in the Arts and Sciences.   Contributors   M. Rachael Arauz, Ph.D. Rachael Arauz is a Boston-based independent curator who has worked at museums including the National Gallery of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She holds a Ph.D. in American and modern art from the University of Pennsylvania, and has organized exhibitions for the Williams College Museum of Art and the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. She has published essays on a broad range of subjects including the drawings of Randall Sellers, and nineteenth-century American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner.   Jonathan Weinberg Jonathan Weinberg is a painter and art historian. He is the author of Speaking for Vice: Homosexuality in the Art of Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley and the First-American Avant-Garde; Ambition and Love in Modern American Art; and, most recently, Male Desire: the Homoerotic in American Art. He is a recipient of the 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship. Weinberg''s paintings are in several important public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Montclair Art Museum. He is currently a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.   Ronald C. Roth Ron Roth is Director and C.E.O. of the Reading Public Museum, where he has overseen such major exhibitions as Dale Chihuly at the Reading Public Museum: A Celebration in Glass. He also served as the Director as the Museum of Nebraska Art, where he wrote and narrated MONA Moments, a weekly, statewide radio program devoted to the visual arts. He has also worked with the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, DC, and served as the Alabama State Museums Coordinator.