After a landmark debut in Brooklyn in 2023, the Tag Conference returns to New York City this June with sharpened purpose. Hosted at the Museum of the City of New York — where Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection currently holds court — this year’s program centers on legacy: specifically, the lasting influence of writers who’ve passed, but whose marks, names, and styles helped shape graffiti as a global culture.

More than a memorial, this is a reckoning for some who want to preserve memory — a gathering of voices from across generations who contemplate the urgency of honoring those whose stories often slip through the cracks of institutional history. What emerges is a rare confluence: practitioners, historians, documentarians, and artists sharing the mic to uplift the names and contributions of pioneers like PHASE 2, Stay High 149, Tracy 168, Dez, Kez 5, Rambo, and Zexor.

The lineup reads like a blueprint of lineage and loyalty: COCO 144 and David Schmidlapp speak on PHASE 2; Chris “Freedom” Pape reflects on Stay High 149; J.SON brings us closer to Tracy 168; Henry Chalfant and Blue “Dero” Asencio illuminate Dez; Skuf YKK on Kez 5; Alan Ket on Rambo; and tributes from Fernando Lions, Tats Cru, Carlos Mare, and scholars Joe Austin, Rafael Schacter, and Edward Birzin. With such a strengthened focus on this lineup — these are  acts of cultural preservation.

At a time when graffiti is increasingly archived, exhibited, and sold — and its imagery absorbed into mainstream culture — the Tag Conference stays grounded in the complexities of its origins: memory, dissent, and street-level scholarship. In the same city that once deployed harsh policies to scrub these names from trains and walls, their stories now resurface — not without controversy, but with clarity. Here, they are not simply lionized or condemned, but understood as originators whose marks challenged norms, claimed space, and left a visual legacy still celebrated and debated today.

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THE TAG CONFERENCE
MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
NEW YORK CITY
JUNE 13 & 14, 2025

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