Lichtenstein at the Whitney: Six Decades, from Mickey to Mirrors

Roy Lichtenstein: Like New opened on the fifth floor of the Whitney Museum of American Art on October 11, 2026. The retrospective follows about six decades of the artist's work, from the 1940s to the 1990s, through paintings, drawings, sculpture, film and prints. It is his first New York retrospective since 1993.

Look Mickey (1961) copies a single cartoon panel onto a large canvas. On a yellow dock, Donald hauls on his rod under the balloon "LOOK MICKEY, I'VE HOOKED A BIG ONE!!" The hook, though, has caught the tail of his own jacket, and Mickey covers his mouth to hold in a laugh. On Mickey's cheek, the red dots of a printer's screen are painted in one by one.

Around the same time, Lichtenstein painted ordinary things one at a time: a tire, a coiled cord, a golf ball, a hot dog. Rendered in black lines and dots, as flat as an ad illustration, they hang well apart on pale walls. The show also reunites, for the first time, all eight works from his 1962 Pop debut at Leo Castelli Gallery.

There are many small drawings, too. In one, in a wooden frame, the same dots fill the face of a woman holding a telephone. Up close, a hand tilting a yellow box and the contents pouring out are each closed off by heavy outlines.

Step back and the scale of the work, and of the crowd, comes through. On October 12, the show's second day, visitors filled the wall of dotted cathedral paintings and the room with the yellow window.

Mirrors were another recurring subject. The round mirror shows no reflection at all, only a green field and dots. In a still life with a goldfish bowl, red fish and yellow fruit are built from the same flat color and dots.

By the fifth-floor windows stands a long panel of a sun and waves in black lines and dots, with the Hudson River outside. The show also recreates three murals, including Greene Street Mural (1983).

A vitrine holds sketchbooks pasted with advertising clippings. How did he choose printed images from comics and ads, and how did he redraw them? The show lets you follow the process through both finished works and source material.

Exhibition: Roy Lichtenstein: Like New
Venue: Whitney Museum of American Art (99 Gansevoort Street), Floor 5
Dates: October 11, 2026–May 10, 2027
Official site: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/lichtenstein
Artworks © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein