The Birthday Was Yesterday
Priya N. Chen on 28th Oct 2026
The Daily Marquee
The Birthday Was Yesterday
A museum that loves a clean dot has planned a messy night. Tonight, from 7 to 10, the Whitney throws a Pop Party for members. The excuse is Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, open since 11 October, and the artist’s 103rd birthday, which was yesterday. The cake, if there is one, is late. The costumes are on time.
In October 1965, Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein went to a Halloween party in Brooklyn dressed as Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick. The Whitney is using that photograph as the invitation. Come as an artist, a picture, or an icon. The museum also asks guests to leave the cruel costumes at home: no mockery, no fake weapons. A pop party with a dress code. Lichtenstein would have understood the rule. His best pictures are rules, drawn very large.
I like the delay. The birthday is a date. The party is the morning after, when the city has had its coffee and decided it still wants to dance. Like New is on the fifth floor. A second Lichtenstein show, Roy Lichtenstein: 1997, is on the third. In the lobby, a jazz trio. At the screenprinting table, visitors print a tote bag and take it home. The serious exhibition gets the night shift. That is the right order. You look first. Then you are allowed to dress up as the look.
Pop art was always a costume. A comic panel, a blonde, a brushstroke copied until it became a trademark. Tonight the museum admits it. The galleries stay open after hours, and the visitors are asked to become the quotation. I would rather they looked at the pictures. The pictures already did the dressing up.
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