First Look: “Like New”: Roy Lichtenstein at the Whitney
Roy Lichtenstein: Like New opens to the public at the Whitney Museum of American Art on October 11 and runs through May 10, 2027. Organized by Meg Onli, the Whitney’s Nancy and Fred Poses Curator, with artist Alex Da Corte as guest curator, it gathers some 130 works across six decades — including all eight paintings from Lichtenstein’s 1962 Pop debut at Leo Castelli Gallery, reunited for the first time, and four re-created murals, every one hand-painted for the occasion.
At the October 7 press preview, the three people behind the show described what they’d built. Here are five works from the galleries, each paired with a quote from the Whitney team.
As I Opened Fire . . . (1964)
Acrylic, oil, and graphite pencil on canvas (three panels). Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Photo by J. Scott Orr.
The war-comics triptych — BRATATATA, muzzle flashes, a plane going down — blown up to altarpiece scale. Lichtenstein’s teacher at Ohio State, Hoyt L. Sherman, preached that “seeing must be developed as an aggressive act”; Sherman himself opens the show, played by Da Corte in a new video.
“We wanted to give the people what they think they know about Roy right away, which is big, it’s bold, it’s graphic, it’s instant. And then slow it down.”
The still-life wall
Clockwise from top left: Still Life with Crystal Bowl, 1972 (Whitney Museum of American Art); Femme au chapeau, 1962 (Collection of Martin Z. Margulies); Reflections on Sunday Morning, 1989 (Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Family Collection); Still Life with Goldfish, 1972 (private collection). Photo by J. Scott Orr.
By 1972 Lichtenstein had stopped copying comics and started copying the canon — Cézanne subjects in benday dots and razor outlines. The show’s real subject, hiding in plain sight: the handmade surface.
“This show is emphatically handmade by everyone here at the Whitney, but also by Alex’s studio and the incredible team at Colossal.”
Look Mickey (1961)
Oil and graphite pencil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; gift of Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein. Photo by J. Scott Orr.
The first Pop painting: Donald Duck, having hooked his own shirttail, lifted from a children’s book. The wall text says the gag introduced the question that would occupy Lichtenstein for decades — what happens to an image when it is copied, simplified, and remade?
“I just wanted to get to the root of this person’s work, which was everywhere, and strangely, also, for me, living in my mind, only on the surface.”
Happy Tears (1964), with Sturtevant’s Study for Lichtenstein’s “Happy Tears” (1967–68)
From right: Lichtenstein, acrylic, oil, and graphite pencil on canvas (private collection); Sturtevant (1924–2014), oil and graphite on canvas (Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland). Photo by J. Scott Orr.
Lichtenstein copied a Mike Sekowsky romance comic; Sturtevant copied Lichtenstein — a foot larger in each direction, deliberately inexact, turning copying into a way of questioning originality and authorship.
“We click, we drag, we copy, we don’t know necessarily what authenticity is.”
Drowning Girl (1963)
Oil and acrylic on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo by J. Scott Orr.
"I DON'T CARE! I'D RATHER SINK — THAN CALL BRAD FOR HELP!" The icon that launched a thousand dorm-room posters, on loan from MoMA. You've waited 33 years to see it in a New York retrospective.
“The last major Roy Lichtenstein retrospective in New York City was at the Guggenheim in 1993. So when I say once-in-a-generation, I mean it quite literally.”
Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, October 11, 2026–May 10, 2027.
