Pop-Art Pandemonium in Chicago
CHICAGO — There’s a massive Roy Lichtenstein retrospective opening this Wednesday, May 16, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Or rather, there isn’t: the opening had to be postponed due to the huge number of people who signed up for the members-only preview.
CHICAGO — There’s a massive Roy Lichtenstein retrospective opening this Wednesday, May 16, at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Or rather, there isn’t: the opening had to be postponed due to the huge number of people who signed up for the members-only preview.
I spoke to Chai Lee, Associate Director of Public Affairs at the Art Institute, who told me that staff were “pleasantly surprised” by the numbers, which are matching the levels seen for the Matisse: Radical Reinvention blockbuster of 2010.
“More than 3,000 people registered for the previews, and the lectures were all filled up as well. The Matisse exhibition also started out strong, but [attendance] ended stronger during the last days of the show due to fantastic word of mouth. The Lichtenstein show, however, is already starting out strong. Because of overwhelming demand from our members, we took this opportunity to extend the member preview days to this Friday, May 18,” Lee says.
The show, by the way, promises to be spectacular. It’s the first real retrospective of Lichtenstein’s work since his death in 1997, and curators James Rondeau and Sheena Wagstaff were even allowed to go through the artist’s work in storage by his widow, Dorothy Lichtenstein, to choose pieces for the exhibition. When asked which day the exhibition now opens to the public, Chai Lee replied: “On May 22, after the NATO summit.”
Ah yes, the NATO summit. Like the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium, the Art Institute will be closed for three days in anticipation of the expected drop in visitors to downtown Chicago due to the massive presence of police, helicopters and protestors. Somehow I don’t think that Lichtenstein, the man who appropriated that comic book image of the fighter jet and missile strike, would have minded the disruption too much.
