Guggenheim pop: 1960 to now features an eclectic selection of major works from the collection by 29 artists, including John Chamberlain, Chryssa, Jim Dine, Richard Hamilton, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Lichtenstein, Marta Minujín, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Lucas Samaras, and Andy Warhol. These works are presented alongside recently acquired contemporary works by artists Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim, Farah Al Qasimi, Maurizio Cattelan, Alex Da Corte, Daniel Gordon, Douglas Gordon, Martine Gutierrez, Lauren Halsey, Lucia Hierro, Yee I-Lann, Annette Kelm, Tommy Kha, Baseera Khan, Shinro Ohtake, Wendy Red Star, Cara Romero, Liu Shiyuan and Sheida Soleimani.

The exhibition foregrounds a lesser-known chapter in the museum’s past: the role of British curator and critic Lawrence Alloway, who introduced Pop art to American audiences through the 1963 Guggenheim exhibition Six Painters and the Object, the first museum presentation of Pop art in New York. Historic works on view detail the emergence of Pop art as artists turned to advertising techniques, reproduction, and mass media, redefining the boundaries of what art could be in the early 1960s.

Contemporary artists and recent acquisitions engage with and offer critical perspectives on the visual forms and language of popular culture. Expanding the movement’s legacy, these artists’ practices explore representations of identity, internet culture, and everyday life. Highlights include Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019); Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s Soft shuttlecock (1995), on view in New York for the first time in 25 years; Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity mirrored room - dancing lights that flew up to the universe (2019), a major loan to the exhibition; and Alex Da Corte’s Roy G Biv (2022), a video installation with recurring live performances.

Bringing together both historical and contemporary perspectives, the exhibition illustrates how Pop renders the familiar strange, elevates the commercial to the sacred, and transforms the banal into the spectacular.