Pop Art Prints

Exhibition Website

Sep 28 2017 - Dec 17 2017

Pop Art took the American art scene by storm approximately 50 years ago. When New York dealer Leo Castelli first showed Pop Art in his gallery in 1962, it was embraced by the audience who responded to the familiar subjects -- flat forms, bright colors and sly commentaries made on the mass culture of the era. Printmaking was an ideal medium for the Pop artists. The commercial techniques of screen printing and lithography were well suited to reproducing the magazine, newspaper and comic-strip images favored by many of the artists. From the commercial viewpoint of the galleries, print editions made this imagery more affordable to a large audience that wanted to buy the art.

Pop Art Prints presents a selection of 37 prints from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s permanent collection. The installation includes works from primarily the 1960s by Allan D’Arcangelo, Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Mel Ramos, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol and Tom Wesselmann. The installation is part of a series that highlights objects from the Smithsonian’s collection that are rarely on public view. [...]

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

  • Works on Paper
  • American
  • 20th Century
  • Pop / Op Art
  • Roy Lichtenstein
  • Robert Rauschenberg
  • Andy Warhol
  • and others

Exhibition Venues & Dates