Roy Lichtenstein: Like New at the Whitney in Meatpacking District, NYC

The Whitney Museum of American Art has given its fifth floor to Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, open October 11, 2026 through May 10, 2027. It is the first New York retrospective of the Pop artist since 1993, and the title comes from a 1962 work.

Lichtenstein was born in 1923, spent most of his life in New York and Southampton, and died in 1997 at seventy-three. His early-1960s paintings took their images from comic books and newspapers. He reworked each composition, enlarged it and transferred it to canvas, imitating commercial printing's heavy black outlines, flat bright colors and fields of dots. The surfaces look cool and mechanical, yet every mark is handmade. The show follows his interest in perception through six decades of painting, drawing, sculpture, film and prints.

Visitors are greeted by a replica of the 96-foot Greene Street Mural. The original hung at Castelli Gallery for six weeks before being covered in drywall and painted over. Co-curator Meg Onli relays the story that Lichtenstein, facing the huge space, decided he would have to use everything he had ever painted. For Like New, colossalmedia remade it by hand, and some of his drawings and process works sit in glass cases set into its surface. Elsewhere, the museum has rebuilt Lichtenstein's 1962 exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery down to the parquet floors. Works on view include Ohhh... Alright... (1964), The Engagement Ring (1961), Turkey (1961) and Girl in Window, a 1963 study for the World's Fair mural. Four murals are re-created in all.

The exhibition is organized by Meg Onli and guest curator Alex Da Corte, with Nakai Falcón and David Crane. Its argument is that images are never stable: they travel, return transformed, and are made "like new."

Programming includes a Pop Party on Wednesday, October 28, from 7 to 10 pm, an after-hours celebration of the artist's 103rd birthday with live music and exhibition tours; members attend free and nonmembers can book tickets. Alex Da Corte gives the Walter Annenberg Lecture on Thursday, October 29, at 6:30 pm. The shop sells the catalogue designed by Irma Boom and an 18-piece Gap–Lichtenstein–Whitney collection, including a red-and-blue dotted sherpa fleece inspired by Cathedral #2. Da Corte's own show, Hot Dog With Ketchup, also runs through May 10, 2027. Advance tickets are recommended.