Tim Rollins and K.O.S.

Tim Rollins + K.O.S. have collaborated with students throughout the world for more than twenty-five years, creating paintings and prints inspired by literary classics, such as Aristophanes’ The Frogs, Gustave Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony, and Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Raised in rural Maine and educated at the University of Maine, School of Visual Arts, and New York University, Rollins began teaching art to educationally challenged students in the South Bronx in the early 1980s. Discovering that many of these kids had artistic talent but could not read well, he made reading the required point of departure for his art classes. Rollins worked with the students during the lunch hour and after school, and then founded the Art and Knowledge Workshop in 1982. In these workshops, the art-making method was consistent: read a book aloud and discuss its major themes while sketching. The final artwork was created by collectively combining elements from each of the individual drawings.

Today, K.O.S. is a changing roster of students. The original group named themselves K.O.S., or “Kids of Survival,” in recognition of the skills they acquired through their participation in the workshops. In 1984, Rollins + K.O.S. received their first National Endowment for the Arts grant and, in 1987, they held their first workshop outside of the South Bronx. Their paintings are held in museum collections nationwide, including the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.