In the 1980s, downtown Manhattan was wild. Economic disruption brought anarchy and experiment. AIDS snuck onto the scene, soon to become a terrifying epidemic. Coke and heroin were on the rise. Graffiti went mainstream. And nightclubs were rife with sex and poppers. From this noir swirl artists and innovators emerged, newbies such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, who made his name spraying subway cars, and Keith Haring, whose reverberating figures wriggled into the white-collar world. “Somewhere Downtown” brings together the stars of 1980s New York, both the well known and the less known. It’s the first time the works of Basquiat and Haring will be exhibited in China. —Elena Clavarino