"POP IMACT! From Johns to Warhol"
2001-01-27 until 2001-04-08
Columbia Museum of Art
Columbia, SC, USA

Forty major Pop Art works from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection opens at the Columbia Museum of Art on January 27, 2001. Considered controversial when it first appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pop Art is now acknowledged as one of the most significant art movements to have emerged since World War II. The Whitney Museum holds one of the most comprehensive collections of Pop Art of any museum in the world. This exhibition will mark the first time these important works have been assembled for a major exhibition in over twenty years.

Included in the exhibition, are icons of the '60s by 17 notable artists including Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselman, Robert Indiana, Marisol, Edward Ruscha, George Segal and Wayne Thiebaud. Pop Art evolved out of a turbulent period in America, one that witnessed dramatic changes politically, economically and culturally. Pop Impact! seeks to re-examine this significant moment in art-making and to address the divergent artistic approaches that emerged. Director of the Whitney Museum, Maxwell L. Anderson says, This exhibition inaugurates a dedicated program of touring exhibitions of works from the Whitney’s collection that is intended to reaffirm the Museum’s national reach by providing communities across the country with a first-hand look at important works from the nation's preeminent museum devoted to modern and contemporary American art. We have embarked on this program with a sense of pride in the contributions that the artists represented in each exhibition have made to American culture, in our unswerving dedication to championing new work and situating it in a larger artistic cultural context, and in our commitment to extending the Museum’s services to communities across the United States and overseas.

The Columbia Museum of Art is one of only five museums on the itinerary for Pop Impact! Following the Columbia presentation, the show travels to the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum of California. The first 2,000 visitors to Pop Impact! at the Columbia Museum of Art will receive a free 24-page full color commemorative booklet of the exhibition.

IMAGE:
Wayne Thiebaud, b. 1920,
Pie Counter, 1963
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;
Purchase, with funds from
the Larry Aldrich Foundation Fund 64.11
© Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of South Carolina

Other Important Exhibitions in United States