Collection: Tim Rollins and K.O.S.

Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) was a collaborative art project founded in the South Bronx in 1981 by artist and teacher Tim Rollins (1955–2017) together with a group of young students from special education classes at Intermediate School 52. Working collectively, they produced large-scale paintings made directly on the pages of canonical literary and musical texts — including works by Franz Kafka, Stephen Crane and George Orwell — combining close reading, discussion and painting to produce works that were simultaneously pedagogical, political and aesthetic. The project operated as both an art collective and an after-school programme, and its work entered major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Dia Art Foundation. Tim Rollins and K.O.S. were a foundational model for socially engaged and collaborative art practice in the United States. They were included in the History of Storytelling archive section of Know Who You Are at Every Age at the Bronx River Art Center in 2014.