"Roy Lichtenstein: Times Square Mural"
2003-05-10 until 2003-09-14
Bellevue Art Museum
Bellevue, WA, USA United States of America

Bellevue Art Museum will present an exhibition of primary and auxiliary materials used by Roy Lichtenstein in creating his Times Square Mural unveiled at the Times Square subway station on September 5, 2002. The exhibition includes a 53-foot full-scale black and white maquette of the mural, preparatory drawings and collages, and various source material such as comics books, paintings and sculptures by Lichtenstein. The exhibition has been organized by Bellevue Art Museum and curated by independent curator Sheryl Conkelton. It will open to the public May 10 and run through September 14, 2003.

Lichtenstein was commissioned 12 years ago by New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority to create a mural for the Times Square subway station. Standing 6 feet high and 53 feet long the mural depicts a skyline view of a futuristic city and architecture from the 1964 World's Fair. According to Sandra Bloodworth, director of the New York Arts for Transit Program, half a million people a day pass through the subway station at 42nd Street and Broadway and view the work left by Lichtenstein as a statement of his belief in New York and the subway.  

Exhibition curator Sheryl Conkleton states, “Roy Lichtenstein’s mural for New York’s Times Square subway station is an important work of public art and a virtual compendium of themes that occupied the artist through his career. The mural is crafted in enamel on steel and portrays a futuristic cityscape, glimpsed over the shoulder of comic book space cowboy Buck Rogers. The mural not only conjures the mid-century sci-fi view of the future but also recaps Lichtenstein’s own career in elements appropriated from earlier paintings and sculptures.

Roy Lichtenstein: Times Square Mural exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with an essay by Harvard University scholar Scott Rothkopf and a new short story by Rick Moody. It will be available in the Museum Store.

The exhibition was organized by Bellevue Art Museum, an expanded version of an exhibition organized by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and the Mitchell-Inness & Nash Gallery, New York.

IMAGE:
Roy Lichtenstein
Times Square Mural
Porcelain enamel on steel
6 feet x 53 feet
1994 (installed in New York City subway station, 42nd and Broadway in 2002)

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Washington

Other Important Exhibitions in United States