Joan Kron, 98, Behind Roy Lichtenstein Billboard, Publishes Memoir on Pop Art

Key facts

• In 1962, the first-ever Pop Art exhibition on the East Coast was held at the YM/YWHA in Philadelphia.
• Organizers Audrey Sabol and Joan Kron featured artists Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, and Claes Oldenburg in Art ’63: A New Vocabulary.
• They made the first 'multiples' by artists like Robert Indiana and Marisol and hosted the Velvet Underground’s first concert in Philadelphia.
• Kron commissioned Roy Lichtenstein’s 'Super Sunset Billboard' (1967); a remake is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Roy Lichtenstein: Like New.
• Kron, now 98, is working on her second documentary and her memoir The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art will be released this December.
• The billboard project faced opposition from Philadelphia’s city planning head and was mocked by radio host Ralph Collier.
• About 40 years later, Art Everywhere UK took over tens of thousands of billboards in Great Britain, followed by a similar US program a year later.
• Kron’s career includes writing for New York Magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Allure.