According to Vogue Style Editor at Large Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis, the best way to learn a city is through its artists.

The artist Peter Dayton has found success in both punk rock and painting. His canvases filled with bright flowers and bold surfboard stripes are inextricably linked to his days opening for the Ramones as the front man of La Peste.

Artist Daniel Arsham and architect Alex Mustonen combine their talents as Snarkitecture, a collective that has realized interdisciplinary projects spanning monumental public sculptures in honor of Miami’s demolished Orange Bowl and a collaboration with choreographer Jonah Bokaer.

Though Keith Haring grew up, attended art school, and had his first solo show in Pennsylvania, much of his career was made in New York, and the pop artist has certainly left his mark here. Several solo shows opening in New York this month serve as a reminder that Haring’s radiant iconography remains a constant presence in the City.

While there are certainly struggles in the life of any artist, New York offers support structures unimaginable to an artist in late-‘90s Panama. When the Panamanian artist and entrepreneur Miky Fabrega decided he wanted to start producing and curating his own shows (after dabbling in music, film, and media), his native land offered little support for emerging artists. "There wasn’t a scene when I started," he says. “I basically designed and created my career.”

In the early days, the artist and NYU Professor Michael St. John couldn’t quite figure out “art.” And while he’s certainly established a working solution—having just completed his eleventh solo show in New York—that query continually compels him. “The question of what can be art, or what is art remains a mystery to this day and is always on my mind,” he says. “There is no answer and that’s a good thing.”

Shoplifter invokes themes of beauty, vanity and humor with the textures and colors of hair, both synthetic and human. Her specialty has grown into several high-profile collaborations, like the one with fashion brand VPL or the one with Eli Sudbrack of Assume Vivid Astro Focus for their 2008 installation at the Museum of Modern Art. She often works with fellow Icelander Björk, who also happens to be presenting a brief Biophilia Live residency in New York this month.

Downtown fashion brand BLK DNM turned a year old yesterday, and it has marked the occasion with a month-long, in-store installation titled Purple in 3D. For the project, a collaboration with Purple Fashion Magazine, BLK DNM’s Johan Lindeberg enlisted Purple’s Olivier Zahm to curate a collection of artworks.