Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now Traces the Pop Art Movement’s Decades-Long Relationship with the Museum and Its Global Influence on Artists Working Today

On June 5, the Guggenheim New York unveils Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now, a focused exhibition exploring the museum’s holdings of Pop art and the movement’s enduring influence on artists working around the world today. Drawing on the institution’s history, Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now illuminates a lesser-known chapter in the museum’s past while foregrounding the significant contributions of both historical and contemporary practices.

Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now features an eclectic selection of major works from the collection by 29 artists, including John Chamberlain, Chryssa, Jim Dine, Richard Hamilton, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Lichtenstein, Marta Minujín, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Lucas Samaras, and Andy Warhol. These works are presented alongside recently acquired contemporary works by artists Farah Al Qasimi, Maurizio Cattelan, Alex Da Corte, Daniel Gordon, Douglas Gordon, Martine Gutierrez, Lauren Halsey, Lucia Hierro, Annette Kelm, Baseera Khan, Shinro Ohtake, Cara Romero, and Sheida Soleimani.

“Many visitors will recognize the iconic imagery and artists associated with Pop, but this exhibition invites them to look again,” said Lauren Hinkson, Curator, Collections. “By placing historic works from the collection into conversation with recent acquisitions by artists working today, Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now demonstrates how Pop art, as a strategy, continues to inspire, provoke, and evolve.”

In 1961, Claes Oldenberg wrote what he called a “poetic ode” to Pop art, a radical new art form that took everyday life as its source material. The Guggenheim’s relationship with Pop art began two years later with the beginning of the 1962 to 1966 tenure of British curator and critic Lawrence Alloway. He was instrumental in introducing the movement to American audiences, organizing several groundbreaking exhibitions at the museum, including Six Painters and the Object (1963), the first museum exhibition of Pop art in New York.

Unfolding across four galleries on three floors, the exhibition begins in Tower 5 with a presentation of 1960s Pop art, featuring quintessential works by Chryssa, Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol. This gallery introduces visitors to the emergence of Pop as artists turned to the imagery of advertising techniques, reproduction, and mass media, redefining the boundaries of fine art in the early 1960s. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s monumental sculpture Soft Shuttlecock (1995), with nine feathers measuring 26 feet each, playfully dominates the space. Created for Oldenburg’s 1995 retrospective in the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda, this marks the first time in 25 years that Soft Shuttlecock is on view in New York.

The presentation in Tower 7 draws on works from the collection inspired by and directly related to ephemeral performances and participatory gatherings that took place in New York in the early 1960s. Combining dance, visual art, music, and poetry, these experimental events ranged from staged dinner parties and illogical ceremonies to fictional storefronts selling absurd objects that critiqued society’s celebration of mass consumption.

The gallery is anchored by Yayoi Kusama’s immersive INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM – DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE (2019), a major loan to the exhibition. Kusama’s practice intersects with Pop art, Minimalism, and Happenings while ultimately resisting categorization. Her work demonstrates both her singular position as a Japanese woman working within a predominantly male artistic milieu and her influence on contemporaries including Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol. From an early Infinity Net painting in the Guggenheim’s collection to her experiential INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM, this display illuminates how Kusama’s work continues to shape contemporary art and culture.

Opening June 26, the exhibition’s second phase brings contemporary artists and recent acquisitions into the Tower 4 and Thannhauser 4 galleries, where they engage with and offer critical perspectives on the visual forms and language of popular culture. These galleries include Maurizio Cattelan’s sensational work Comedian (2019), a promised gift to the museum. The work—a banana affixed to the wall with duct tape—has become an icon of contemporary art, sparking international dialogue about art, value, and authorship. Recent acquisitions include photographs by Wendy Red Star and Liu Shiyuan, sculpture by Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim and Lucia Hierro, and textiles by Yee I-Lann, among others. In Alex Da Corte’s video installation ROY G BIV (2022), the artist stages a five-act play in which he performs as Marcel Duchamp, Rrose Sélavy, the Joker from Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman, and one part of Constantin Brancusi’s 1916 sculpture The Kiss. The video is projected onto a cube that professional housepainter and brother of the artist, Americo Da Corte, paints monthly in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Many of the artists on view in these galleries, such as Tommy Kha and Cara Romero, explore representation and reclamation of identity through pop culture imagery. Sheida Soleimani and Daniel Gordon create layered photographic tableaus that encourage close and slow looking, in contrast to today’s internet culture. Complementing the museum’s notable Pop art holdings, this selection of recent works reflects the movement’s global impact and demonstrates how artists today draw from and challenge its legacy.

Many of the contemporary works entered the collection with the support of the Guggenheim’s affinity groups and acquisition committees, including the Asian Art Circle, Latin American Circle, WANASA (West Asia, North Africa, South Asia) Circle, Photography Council, and Young Collectors Council. Together, they further the museum’s work to steward modern and contemporary art across diverse geographies, disciplines, histories, and cultures.

The Guggenheim Store will offer a rare opportunity to explore a selection of archival and out-of-print Guggenheim publications devoted to artists central to the story of Pop art. Drawn from more than six decades of the museum’s exhibition history and scholarship, these titles—including catalogues on Maurizio Cattelan, Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and James Rosenquist—invite visitors to rediscover landmark exhibitions and trace the many directions Pop art has taken across generations.

Also available in limited quantities is Six Painters and the Object, the publication accompanying Lawrence Alloway’s influential 1963 Guggenheim exhibition. Designed by Herbert Matter, the celebrated modernist graphic designer and photographer, the booklet stands as one of the earliest museum publications devoted to Pop art and remains a touchstone in the history of the movement.

Exhibition programs include film screenings, in-gallery talks, and opportunities to engage directly with artists in the exhibition throughout the run.

This exhibition is organized by Lauren Hinkson, Curator, Collections, with support from Victoria Horrocks, Curatorial Fellow, Photography, and Faith Hunter, Curatorial Assistant.

Support

Major support for Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now is provided by Edlis-Neeson Foundation.

Generous funding is provided by Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation.

Support is also generously provided by Sonja Hoel Perkins and Per J. Skarstedt.

The exhibition and the conservation of the artwork are made possible by

About the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1937 and is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. The international constellation of museums includes the Guggenheim New York; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; the Guggenheim Bilbao; and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. A “temple of spirit” where radical art and architecture meet, the Guggenheim New York is among a group of eight Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the United States designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. To learn more about the Guggenheim New York and the Guggenheim’s activities around the world, visit guggenheim.org.

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