The media may have unmasked Banksy — again. That's angered some art fans
but not ruffled dealers
[March 23, 2026]
By LAURIE KELLMAN
LONDON (AP) — Years before the rise of Instagram, Banksy figured out
that the key to real influence lay in not being famous, exactly, but in
being anonymous.
The mystery of his identity has long been part of the value of his art,
which for decades and across continents defied authority from public
walls and self-shredded on the auction block. Now, Banksy’s apparent
unmasking by the Reuters news agency has generated talk about whether
the works themselves retain their cultural and financial value.
It also raises the question: Why pop the red balloon of his mystique in
the first place? Many Banksy fans mourned the loss of the mystery and
lashed out at the news outlet. One said it was like being told without
warning that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
“I feel like they are telling me how a magic trick is done,” said Thomas
Evans, a Denver-based artist on Instagram. “Sometimes I just want to
enjoy the magic trick.”
But some art experts say the murals and the message will survive
Banksy’s naming because his appeal wasn't driven solely by his
anonymity. He and his works — mischievous and also dark — stand as
witnesses to injustice, oppression and inequality around the world, from
the artist's native England to walled-off Bethlehem and war-ravaged
Ukraine. Subtract his anonymity, they say, and the work still inspires
reflection and discussion.
“People buy his works because they absolutely love it,” said Acoris
Andipa, director of the Andipa gallery in London. “The main feedback
that I get is that they really, frankly, don’t care if they know who he
is.”
Naming the ghost — and the backlash — is engagement, too
Banksy, long thought to have been born Robin Gunningham around 1972,
grew out of a tradition of street artists who viewed the undercover act
of posting their art in public as a subversive form of expression. The
postindustrial landscape of his native Bristol was his canvas and
gallery. The walls of London, New York and elsewhere gave him a global
stage just before the rise of social media.
Banksy's apparent identity has been an open secret among protective
fellow artists, and long been easy to find online for those who wanted
to know. The Daily Mail reported in 2008 “compelling evidence
suggesting" that was the artist's birth name. It has been published by
other news outlets, including by The Associated Press in 2016, as part
of their coverage of the detective work.
Reuters reported last week that after The Daily Mail's story, Banksy
changed his legal name to David Jones — the second most-popular name in
Britain. It's also the given name of another rock star, the late David
Bowie, whose Ziggy Stardust avatar inspired a 2012 Banksy painting of
Queen Elizabeth II.
Bansky's lawyer didn't respond to a request for comment, and the
artist's spokeswoman declined to participate in this story.
Reuters pieced together that a David Jones traveled to Ukraine with a
well-known associate of Banksy's in late 2022 — just before the artist's
work began appearing on buildings that had been bombed by Russia. Banksy
later confirmed that he'd created seven murals in the war zone,
including one of a child flipping over a grown man who is wearing a
black belt. Russian President Vladimir Putin practices judo.
There's evidence that even some in the establishment he was protesting
have accepted Banksy. They didn't arrest him, for example, after the
Royal Courts of Justice removed a Banksy stencil depicting a judge in a
traditional wig and gown beating an unarmed protester with a gavel. Some
street artists groused that they might be arrested for creating such
graffiti — but when it's a Banksy, it's art.
Robin Gunningham wasn't always so elusive
On Sept. 17, 2000, a Robin Gunningham was arrested for defacing a Marc
Jacobs billboard atop a building on Hudson Street in New York.
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A painting by British street artist Banksy is seen on a building
destroyed by fighting in Borodyanka, Kyiv region, Ukraine, Sunday,
Nov. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko, File)
 In a handwritten signed confession,
he described the work on the night in question: “I had been out
drinking at a nightclub with friends when I decided to make a
humorous adjustment to a billboard on top of the property,” he wrote
in court records unearthed by Reuters and confirmed by the AP. “I
painted eyeshadow a new mouth and a speach(sic) bubble” on the photo
of a male model. He was charged with a misdemeanor.
The artist doesn't need an alleged naming to make news. He created
multiple works just in London in 2025, and grabbed headlines
elsewhere for having his art sold or auctioned for millions. But
Banksy has courted a public image centered around morality, justice
and guerrilla tactics — he's often likened to Robin Hood or Batman.
“Banksy woz ere,” he wrote with his animal murals at the London Zoo,
which were removed in 2024.
Still, along with the sadness, there's ample speculation in the art
world and on social media that the artist himself orchestrated this
round of naming. He didn't deny the Reuters story.
That “would be very much in line with his practice of stunts and
satire,” observed Madeleine White, the senior sales and acquisitions
consultant at London's Hang-Up Gallery, “As they say, ‘all publicity
is good publicity.’”
She noted, however, that the backlash is directed at the media — not
the artist, or the potency of his work. Reuters says it opted to
publish some, but not all, of the information its reporters
uncovered about Banksy's identity, because he is a public figure,
whatever his name — and he's had an outsized influence on public
events and discourse. What's more, much of his work has been done on
other people's property.
Banksy's star power is about far more than anonymity
Named or not, Banksy's stardom lives, art experts say.
It endures in the wonder of his ability to erect new art under the
noses of authorities well into the age of closed-circuit television
and social media. It appeals because his spectacle and wit draw
people in and the settings — the hulk of bombed buildings, for
example, or Israel's towering wall at the border of the West Bank —
invite them to reflect. Now, fans are on the lookout for how and
whether he'll respond to the news of Robin Gunningham and David
Jones.
Joe Syer, a Banksy expert and founder of MyArtBroker, said that the
artist has always responded to world events. “And that’s where the
real relevance, and value, sits.”
“If anything, Banksy’s anonymity has functioned less as a celebrity
device and more as a way to keep the work universally accessible,
detached from personality, ego, or biography,” he said in an email.
“It allows the work to sit in public space, politically and
culturally, without being anchored to an individual in the way the
mainstream press often frames it.”
Christopher Banks, founder of the New York-based Objects of
Affection Collection, reads Banksy's naming “not as a biographical
event, but as a structural stress test” of the artist's system of
managing his absence.
“Banksy's best works carry their meaning without the author. He was
there,” Banks wrote, citing the artist's murals in Ukraine and his
solidarity with the war's victims.
"The name matters less than the presence. The presence was always
what the work was about.”
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Michael Sisak contributed to this report from New York.
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