iWhitney Museum of American ArtMeatpacking District
Roy Lichtenstein: Like New
A comprehensive retrospective of roughly 130 works spanning the 1940s through the 1990s, tracing how Roy Lichtenstein transformed mass-culture imagery into iconic Pop art while probing duplication and the circulation of images across media.
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Eight paintings that have not hung together since 1962 are back on one set of walls, in their original arrangement. They made up Lichtenstein's first Pop-style show, at Leo Castelli Gallery, and the Whitney has reunited every work from it.
You start by walking the nearly 96-foot Greene Street Mural, one of four rebuilt murals, to Image Duplicator, a pair of bulging comic-book eyes. Then roughly 130 works fill the fifth floor, including Look Mickey and Drowning Girl. The curators frame it around copying, and Lawler, Pettibone and Sturtevant, who each copied him in turn, hang alongside. The title comes from a 1962 canvas, and it is also the two words on every resale listing you have ever scrolled past.
Wallpaper called it "revelatory and snappy". ARTnews found it stylish rather than a rethink, peaking at the Rouen Cathedral paintings, and suggested skimming the last third. Admission is $30, free for visitors 25 and under, and the Whitney recommends booking ahead. Fridays run until 10pm, free from 5pm.
Editor's pick
About 130 works from the 1940s to the 1990s, with the paintings from his 1962 debut at Leo Castelli hung together again. A full retrospective, and the one to see if you only know the comic-strip canvases.
Look for
The 1962 Castelli debut, reunited
All eight paintings from Lichtenstein's first Pop-style show hang in their original arrangement, the first time they have been together since.
Greene Street Mural, rebuilt
A nearly 96-foot wall of his signature brushstrokes and benday dots opens the show, with vitrines of drawings, maquettes and Polaroids set into it.
The Mirrors room
A rounded, silver-walled room ringed with eight Mirror canvases from 1969 to 1972, dotted circles of glass that reflect nothing, the most ever shown together in a retrospective.
Lawler, Pettibone and Sturtevant
Three artists who built work out of copying Lichtenstein hang beside the paintings they copied.
Girl in Window, outdoors
Alex Da Corte and his studio hand-painted a 32-foot-tall Girl in Window on the Whitney's facade, so part of the show can be seen without going in.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- First-Timers
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want a radical rethink: ARTnews found it doesn't upend what you already know about Lichtenstein.
With kids
Free for visitors 25 and under, so only adults pay. Strollers are allowed everywhere in the Museum.
Also at Whitney Museum of American Art
On now nearby
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Image credits
8
- Roy Lichtenstein: Like NewCourtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art
- Yoshitomo NaraCourtesy of David Zwirner
- Jem Perucchini: SospiroCourtesy the artist and Corvi-Mora, London
- Whitney Museum of American ArtBeyond My Ken, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- David ZwirnerCourtesy David Zwirner
- Hauser & WirthJim.henderson, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Dia ChelseaFound5dollar, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Pace GalleryPace Gallery