Dorothy Lichtenstein and Donna De Salvo Discuss Pop Art & the Early Work of Roy Licthenstein

The Parrish Art Museum presents Dorothy Lichtenstein, former director of the pioneering Paul Bianchini Gallery that operated in New York in the 1960s, and Donna De Salvo, Senior Adjunct Curator, Dia Art Foundation, in the talk Roy Lichtenstein and Pop Art: Before & After the Dots. The program is offered onsite and livestreamed at 3pm, Saturday October 23—the closing weekend of Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-1960, on view at the Museum.

Dorothy Lichtenstein, who worked closely with many of the Pop artists of that era, and De Salvo, Curator of Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition, 1955-1962, will discuss the legendary artist and pivotal period in art in the United States. Roy Lichtenstein was one of the progenitors of Pop Art. His work in the 1950s reveals much about the preoccupations of a younger generation of artists in the post-war U.S. as they attempted to work their way through and out of the shadows of Abstract Expressionism. Lichtenstein’s wide-ranging explorations of subject matter and form would lead to his groundbreaking Pop paintings, first shown in New York in 1962, ushering in a new attitude towards art from which there was no turning back.

About Dorothy Lichtenstein

Dorothy Lichtenstein is President of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, which is dedicated to the encouragement of a broad understanding of the art of Roy Lichtenstein and the artists of his time. After studying art history at Arcadia University (formerly Beaver College), she became director of the Bianchini Gallery, organizing exhibitions and projects dealing with emerging Pop art. Dorothy is equally committed to scientific research as she also serves on the Leadership Council of the New York Stem Cell Foundation and is a recipient of the Chevalier of Arts and Letters from the French Government.

About Donna De Salvo

Curator, writer, and consultant Donna De Salvo has worked with numerous national and international artists and museum collections; and is currently Senior Adjunct Curator, Special Projects, Dia Art Foundation. The Robert Lehman Curator at the Parrish Art Museum in the 1990s, De Salvo held several positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, becoming its first Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs where she oversaw the museum’s curatorial department and program of exhibitions and acquisitions and was centrally involved in the development and design of the Whitney’s new building and exhibition galleries.

About the Exhibition

The first major museum exhibition to investigate the early work of the artist, History in the Making made its full, public debut at the Parrish, which is sited in proximity to Southampton Village, where Lichtenstein lived and worked for 30 years. This venue emphasizes Lichtenstein’s bond to the region and the Museum, where exhibitions of his work have been held across four decades. Featuring approximately 80 paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints—many on public view for the first time—History in the Making provides an illuminating prologue to Lichtenstein’s well-known comics-inspired imagery. The exhibition examines the period before Pop art and Lichtenstein’s adoption of what would become his signature use of Benday dots. The exhibition is co-curated by Elizabeth Finch, Lunder Chief Curator at Colby College Museum of Art, and Marshall N. Price, Chief Curator and Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The presentation at the Parrish Art Museum is organized by Alicia G. Longwell, Ph.D., Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator.

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