Objet: How Skateboard Decks Became Art Collectibles

If you walk into the Museum of Modern Art’s gift shop today, you’ll pass Keith Haring mugs and Yayoi Kusama snow globes before reaching a section dedicated to artist-designed skate decks. The decks — meaning the wooden body of the board where you plant your feet — are often printed with pre-existing paintings and drawings by household names like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, as well as more contemporary darlings like Raymond Pettibon and Jenny Holzer. Each deck fe