Exhibitions
This exhibition history, and the catalogue raisonné overall, covers solo and group exhibitions of Roy Lichtenstein's art held through 2009 at museums, galleries and other institutions. Selected major exhibitions after 2009 are included as well. Extended loans are treated like exhibitions. Excluded are in-house showings of works from an institution’s own permanent collection. Collection shows on loan to other institutions, however, are included. Exhibitions with prints are included in the backmatter, but references to single prints only reflect the research of the 2002 publication, The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1948–1997, by Mary-Lee Corlett and are linked in print entries' Remarks.
Art fairs are not listed except when the works were shown in a formally curated (solo) exhibition or were otherwise relevant. Auctions are not included unless they served as benefit exhibitions. Benefit auction previews are not listed as exhibitions, but instead are mentioned in the affected artworks' provenance.
Many sources were consulted in researching this exhibition history. Among them were the records maintained at the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Archives; gallery records (especially those of Lichtenstein’s long-time dealer, Leo Castelli, New York); museum and university documentation; other artists’ records; exhibition announcements and other printed matter accompanying exhibitions; published exhibition histories; and published exhibition reviews. Items known only through notes by the artist and the artist’s studio may be included if documentation is sufficient to verify details, in such cases verifiable sources are noted.
Format and Style
The format of the full entries includes an abbreviation (which appears in the entries of individual artworks in the catalogue raisonné) followed by institution name and city, exhibition title (in italic), and exhibition dates. Entries for exhibitions that traveled include the subsequent venues with dates. The standard format for an exhibition that did not travel is:
Abbreviation
Venue (usually also the organizer), city, state or country, Exhibition Title, dates.
North American cities are only listed with their state and not the country (“United States”). Foreign cities are given with their country.
The abbreviation is the year the exhibition opened followed by the city and, in most cases, a shortened form of the name of the institution or gallery hosting the first or only showing. Generally, shortened names were preferred to initials, unless initials are commonly used by the institution itself. Each combination of city and organization name is unique: for example, “New York J. Goodman” and “New York M. Goodman” are used to indicate, respectively, James Goodman Gallery and Marian Goodman Gallery. If there were multiple shows during a given year at an institution, letters are added to the abbreviation in chronological order, e.g., 1971a New York Castelli, 1971b New York Castelli, etc.
Special formatting consideration has been made for the selected art fairs and biennials: organizer and venue are listed together, and the entries’ abbreviation form is the organizer not the venue.
Institutions, Organizers and Venues
If the name of an institution begins with “the” that initial article is dropped. In the case of non-English institution names, capitalization is treated as if the names were in English. The names of exhibition spaces at colleges, as well as the institution names in use at the time an exhibition was held, are provided when available. The name of a gallery or museum that is part of a larger institution, such as a college or university, appears before the name of its host institution. The abbreviated name may be based on either the exhibition space or that of the educational institution. The abbreviated name is usually based on the larger intuition, except in cases where the smaller gallery is also well-known.
When an exhibition title includes a lender or institution that differs from the first venue, readers can assume significant organizational activity upon their part. If the venue and organizer differ, the organizational entity is noted with a remark. In traveling exhibitions, the first venue of the tour starts the entry. Curatorial responsibilities can be assumed to have laid with the organizing institution. Curators of solo shows are acknowledged by name when available, with a focus on museums’ exhibitions and gallery shows where the curators are mentioned in related published materials. The first venue is the exhibition organizer unless it is noted otherwise. If "circulated by" appears before an organization’s name, the tour was arranged by that entity.
Specific street addresses are included primarily for Leo Castelli Gallery but are also given for other galleries that had more than one location in the same city, such as Gagosian Gallery, Pace Gallery or Galerie Ilena Sonnabend. For New York City, boroughs, not neighborhoods, are provided for exhibitions taking place outside Manhattan. East and West Germany are not distinguished, but elsewhere the country name in place at the time an exhibition was held is used.
Exhibited Artworks
Multiple sources were consulted to verify artworks’ exhibition histories: the robust holdings of RLF Archives, personal and institutional correspondence, consignment and shipping lists, installation photography, exhibition and catalogue checklists, periodicals, etc. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify and confirm exhibited works. When resources were unavailable or incomplete, the authors’ identification methodology for artworks included in a show is explained. Works may be linked with the qualifier probably where applicable.
Titles
Much of the available documentation of group gallery exhibitions shows an informal use of titles. Every attempt was made to define and use the contemporaneous title of the exhibition. When this was not possible, we deferred to the name published on printed materials and gallery websites. When titles could not be confirmed or were not known, a descriptive title was added by the authors in Roman type to indicate it’s not an official title. In Castelli Gallery shows, the group exhibition artists are added in Roman type in parentheses.
The punctuation of exhibition titles in foreign languages follows standards for English, though capitalization follows the style generally used in that language. For titles in non-Roman alphabets, the authors have provided an English service translation. When exhibition titles changed during a tour, subsequent venues’ titles are provided when they were available. These appear in parentheses after the institution name and dates. Sources include exhibition announcements, catalogues, and brochures. When a traveling exhibition was expanded or otherwise revised at a venue, this is noted.
Dates
Where specific exhibition dates are unknown, those entries appear at the beginning of the relevant group (year or month) in the chronological ordering.
References
Exhibition references in the artwork records are given with an abbreviation and hyperlinked to the full exhibition records in the list of exhibitions.
When an artwork was not shown at all venues of a traveling exhibition, that is stated in the reference remark. A remark that clarifies where the work was shown, whichever is greater, is used (e.g., “only New York, Paris, Amsterdam” or “not New York”).
For sketchbooks, references include the page number of the drawing displayed. On rare occasions when an artwork has been exhibited but is not illustrated or listed in an exhibition catalogue, that is indicated as “not in cat.”