Welcome back, OK. Banksy is known
as the world's most elusive artist.
With his stencil designs,
you can actually see them all across London.
Well now Banksy's collection consists
of over 100 different pieces and they
are being shown all over the world.
And for the next couple of
months you can actually see this
collection right here in DC.
That's where we're going to find
Kristen Berset Harris today.
She is live at Gallery Place,
checking out this collection.
Good morning, Kristen.
Good morning, Ellen. Yes,
this is so cool that this is
here in DC for all of us to check out
the iconic works of Banksy and it's
a unauthorized private collection of
so many of his pieces, so we're going
to learn about some of them today.
Joining me now is Nick Harkin an
expert here with Banksy. He's still,
we've never seen his face, right?
What can you tell us about?
Never seen his face?
No one really knows who he is,
but we know that he creates
brilliant and funny and fabulous art.
How did all of this this
legend of Banksy get started?
Well, it's really interesting.
What he did is he always was a
graffiti artist and one night he
was spray painting a wall and
the cops came and he ran away.
He ran through a flooring,
Birch got all scratched up and he
hid underneath a garbage truck and he
was there for hours and he looked up
and he saw stencil at the bottom of
the garbage truck and he said haha,
that's what I'm going to be doing
from now on to make artwork and
create my art quickly I'm going
to create a stencil in advance.
I'll go.
Quickly and I'll spray paint the wall
and then run away before I can get caught.
It's incredible. You never know
how something's gonna happen.
We've got one of his pieces back
here and these are all from private
collectors that are in this exhibit.
But what does this one right here?
Well, we've collected 100 pieces from
various collectors throughout the world.
Banks he doesn't authorize shows,
but this is one that actually anyone
could acquire if they're lucky.
What he does is he creates these welcome meds
and it's a benefit for refugees from Africa,
and he works with these.
Refugees to create these
very iconic welcome mats,
and if you notice the red
welcome that's on there.
It is because that is created from
life vests that these people wore
as they were fleeing Africa to
get to Greece or other locations.
That's incredible and they these
are something that maybe in a
future auction people can acquire.
There's a place where you
can sign up for an e-mail,
and on the day that they make
them available, they send out an
e-mail and people who are quick.
It can purchase one.
There's something in here right here.
There's a quote from Banksy says
nobody ever listened to me until
they didn't know who I was.
I mean, that just summarizes this
perfectly. Ohh, he's got
such a great sense of humor,
and throughout this exhibit
you'll see a lot of his very
funny quotes peppered throughout.
And then we also have an image
that we think is Banksy here,
so that this is a photograph of sort
of a shrouded figure in the background,
but you can see it's an
artist working in the studio.
You can see some of the famous pieces.
And you see the rat,
which Banksy actually identifies with rat,
is an anagram of the word art,
and he has sort of always said
that a graffiti artist is a
little bit like a rat.
He has quite the sense of humor for sure
and you kind of think maybe that's him.
Maybe that's not him.
Now these are all everything that we're
gonna see through this maze of exhibit
is from private collectors, right?
But they're all authenticated,
so we're there are no fakes.
There's no copies here.
All of these pieces were
purchased at auction,
and these very generous collectors
have allowed us to take their pieces
and bring them to Washington DC,
so we're thrilled
as you have helped with this
exhibit and learn more about.
Banksy, what do you think
surprised you the most about him?
I mean, he's still kind of a mystery
to all of us as we're learning
piece by piece as it comes out.
He has such important political messages.
You may not agree with
everything that you see here,
but it's really something that's
definitely worth considering.
And I think it's something that really
deserves a lot of attention and
some of his pieces we're going to
see the girl with the Red Heart.
That one was so iconic,
so I know you going to talk
about that in a little bit.
But how does somebody like
Banksy go from a street artist
to this legendary artist that
people are paying millions for?
Well, a lot of times he would do his work,
and oftentimes it was very
ephemeral and intentionally so.
It would be that he would think
that it would get painted over.
Maybe the next day,
and sometimes it just grew in
popularity and his style is so
distinctive that people grow to love it.
And then he started releasing
works on paper or on canvas.
He is truly amazing, and it is so unique.
And so contemporary, we're going to
learn more about Banksy coming up.
Nick, thank you so very much, Ellen.
I'm gonna send it back to you and
start my tour of this exhibit.
It looks and I love that quote too.
That's quote of the day Kristen
named it there. Thank you so much.
I'm looking forward to seeing
the rest of it. There you go.