American artist and activist Keith Haring was BOTD in 1958. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, he trained as a commercial artist in Pittsburgh before moving to New York in 1978 to study painting. He quickly developed a cult following with his cartoon-like drawings graffitied onto subway walls and blank advertising spaces around the city. By the 1980s, he was a superstar of the art world, taking Andy Warhol’s Pop Art sensibility and infusing it with political urgency in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Proudly queer yet engaging and accessible, his art became the visual language of 1980s AIDS activism, frequently used in safe sex campaigns and gay rights protests. He collaborated on art projects and photo shoots with Grace Jones and Madonna, donating his time to produce public artworks alongside high-end commissions from Fiorucci and the Whitney Museum. He died in 1990 aged 31. A year before his death, he established the Keith Haring Foundation, an AIDS education charity. In 2019, he was inducted into the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall Memorial in New York. A TV series about his life is being developed by filmmaker Andrew Haigh.