May 15, 2026
Continuing the Foundation’s long-term efforts to place its archival and historic Shunk-Kender (Harry Shunk / Janos Kender) materials in public collections where they can best support access, research, teaching, and exhibitions, between 2025 and 2026 we have completed additional gifts of approximately 1,900 Shunk-Kender prints to twelve institutions:
- Newcomb Museum, Tulane University – 100 prints
- Columbus Museum of Art – 220 prints
- Walker Art Center – 32 prints
- The Image Centre, Toronto – 800 prints
- Portland Art Museum – 23 prints
- The Ohio State University – 153 prints
- New Orleans Museum of Art – 58 prints
- Art Institute of Chicago – 53 prints
- Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University – 225 prints
- University of California, Berkeley – 115 prints
- University of Colorado – 34 prints
- Jordan Schnitzer Museum of the University of Oregon – 92 prints
Additional discussions are underway with at least 4 other museums.
May 1, 2026
Furthering our distribution of artworks and creative studies from the studio of Roy Lichtenstein and his family, the Foundation’s most recent collection gifts to museums of more than 70 works, from April 2025 to May 2026, include:
- Albertina, Vienna – 15 works related to sculpture, including the 12’ Lamp cast, this in honor of the 250th Anniversary of the Albertina
- Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY – 1 unfinished 1960s ceramic
- Morgan Museum and Library, NYC – 23 preparatory works on acetate, sketchbook drawings and editioned Hat
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC – 9 preparatory works for Chair and Ottoman and maquettes for House I sculpture
- Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY – 2 models of Lichtenstein designs for Mermaid, the America’s Cup sailboat
- Tate & National Gallery Scotland, London & Edinburgh – 16 prints to complete the Roy Lichtenstein Artist Room donation process
- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond – sample of Lichtenstein carpet design for Vorwerk
- Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC – 10 prints and woodblocks for Lichtenstein prints and an artist illustrated book by Walasse Ting
March 10, 2026
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $36,000 to the Colby College Museum of Art to enable their purchase of Pop Artists 1964, a limited-edition portfolio of portrait photographs (Warhol, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Wesselman, Lichtenstein) by Ken Heyman, published by the Gagosian Gallery in 2003.
October 13, 2025
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed a lead gift of $25,000 to the Trisha Brown Dance Company, in memory of Dorothy Lichtenstein, to support the reimagining of Robert Rauschenberg’s Pelican (1963) and Trisha Brown’s Skunk Cabbage, Salt Grass and Waders (1967).
October 2, 2025
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed $15,000 to support supplemental wrap-up activities for the Aspen Institute Artist Endowed Foundation Consortium Advancing Next-Gen Leaders in the Visual Arts in 2026.
October 1, 2025
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed $30,000 to sponsor the special Study Day on March 28, 2026, co-hosted by the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Museum of Art. This invitational event focuses on, among other things, sculpture conservation. The event is on the occasion of the contemporaneous exhibition (January 31-April 26, 2026) of the Foundation’s major Lichtenstein Centennial gift of historic sculpture, maquettes, studies and sculpture-related materials shared by these two Dallas museums. (see also RLF website exhibition schedule and prior group gift announcement April 22, 2025)
August 5, 2025
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed a lead gift of over $2,000,000 to help the Archives of American Art in its newly launched Digital Transformation Initiative.
See the Archives of American Art’s press release for further details.
April 22, 2025
Furthering our distribution of artworks and creative studies from the studio of Roy Lichtenstein and his family, the Foundation’s most recent gifts of more than 250 works, from July 2023 to Spring 2025, include:
- To the British Museum, 9 drawings, pastels, sketches, 34 prints and one Castelli portfolio
- To the Albertina’s new museum of large-scale contemporary painting and sculpture (Albertina Klosterneuburg), 95 sculptures, maquettes, tapestries and studies
- To the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Museum of Art, a shared study collection of 57 sculptures, maquettes and studies
- To the Columbus Museum of Art, 4 studies and full-scale and smaller maquettes for the 30-foot high sculpture Brushstrokes in Flight at the Columbus International Airport and the 10-print suite of the artist’s illustrations for La Nouvelle Chute de l’Amérique
- To the Ohio State University, the full-scale posthumous recreation of Super Sunset Billboard
- To the Kunstmuseum Basel, a career survey of 33 Lichtenstein prints
- To the National Gallery Australia, Canberra, 8 cancellation proofs mostly from the Tyler Graphics Lichtenstein Reflections series prints to add to their Kenneth Tyler Print Collection holdings of cancellation proofs by numerous other artists
Additional discussions are underway with seven more museums in the US & UK relating to another thirty-plus works of art. It is hoped that all art gifts from the Foundation will facilitate public access to the works of Roy Lichtenstein and provide materials for display, scholarly interpretation and technical research/preservation.
October 27, 2023
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation publishes the first catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works in all media, at the start of the Lichtenstein centenary.
The catalogue is available to all for free on the Foundation’s catalogue raisonné website.
The Foundation adds to its centenary gifts of art to museums in the U.S. and overseas by another 180 works and new museum partnerships.
Read the press release.
Please enjoy the grand October 27, 2023 Roy Lichtenstein Centennial birthday party and the launch of our core mission: Roy Lichtenstein: A Catalogue Raisonné. This archival tape and all our Foundation rezcords will be preserved and accessible at the Archives of American Art in our comprehensive Lichtenstein papers donation, to be completed by 2026.
© Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
June 17, 2023
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed $250,000 to the Foundation for Contemporary Arts as Lead Partner for Artistic Programs FCA’s 60th Anniversary Gala.
June 13, 2023
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed the final part of our $500,000 lead Challenge Grant to the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) 50th Anniversary Endowment campaign. We are delighted to have added extra incentive for all in helping secure the longevity of this most important scholarly organization.
June 1, 2023
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announces the first major group of art and archival Lichtenstein Centennial gifts to five museums, see:
Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Donates 186 Artworks to Five Museums Ahead of Artist’s Centennial
Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Press Release
April 27, 2023
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed $135,950 to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC to underwrite the acquisition of 175 works by 50 artists from the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia, PA. We are delighted to have facilitated this profound enhancement of the holdings of the Gallery as well as helping to strengthen the future of the Brandywine Workshop and Archives. https://artdaily.cc/news/162277/National-Gallery-of-Art-acquires-prints-by-50-artists-from-the-Brandywine-Workshop-and-Archives
April 24, 2023
The Roy Lichtenstein Centennial Stamp was issued.
For more information see:
U.S. Postal Service Honors Roy Lichtenstein’s Pop Art on New Forever Stamps
U.S. Postal Service Honors Roy Lichtenstein With New Forever Stamps
March 2023
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation is pleased to note that the latest addition to the Getty’s The Artist’s Materials series is the long-awaited publication Roy Lichtenstein Outdoor Painted Sculpture. The Foundation, Estate and related fabricators have been working with the Getty conservation and research teams since 2007 supplying materials, compiling data and adding fabrication histories. We are delighted that this core reference is now available. We congratulate Julie Wolfe and all her colleagues on this critical research publication. See more at:
https://shop.getty.edu/collections/getty-publications/products/roy-lichtenstein-outdoor-painted-sculpture-978-1606066690
November 8, 2022
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation pledged $78,000, over three years, to the Aspen Institute Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative in support of a three-year demonstration project to advance the next generation of BIPOC leaders in the visual arts. In addition, the Foundation’s Archive has offered to host a BIPOC intern/fellow for each of the next three summers.
October 26, 2022
Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and Executive Director Jack Cowart received the Skowhegan 2022 Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Award for Outstanding Patronage of the Arts.
Press Release
Watch the Presentation
February 10, 2022
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation concluded its long-planned gift of a group of 558 Shunk-Kender (Harry Shunk and Janos Kender) archival photographs to the Whitney Museum of American Art. The photographs are those shot by Shunk-Kender collaborating with and documenting the actions of 27 artists at Pier 18 in the Summer of 1971, at the invitation of artist-activist Willoughby Sharp. Part of this gift also includes a suite of photographs documenting Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1975 ephemeral intervention cutting into the west end of a pier building, titling the removal Day’s End. This latter pier, Pier 52, formerly stood across from the present-day Whitney and the site is now occupied by the “ghost pier” sculpture created by David Hammons, echoing the vanished shape of the original building and memorializing the historic Matta-Clark intervention.
October 11, 2021
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed $10,000 to join the donor consortium of artist-endowed foundations in support of the Aspen Institute AEF Community’s DEAI Capacity to Host BIPOC Interns and Fellows.
October 4, 2021
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed $75,000 to the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) for a special project relating to IFAR’s 50th Anniversary.
August 24, 2021
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation pledged $160,000 a year to the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective for a four-year pilot phase to underwrite two fellowships and their related support in The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Post-Baccalaureate Fellowships in Museum Professions.
July 17, 2021
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed $50,000 to the Parrish Art Museum to support Exhibition Outreach and Programs related to Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-1960.
June 17, 2021
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated Roy Lichtenstein’s monumental public sculpture Brushstroke Group, 1996 (fabricated 2005), to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This sculpture has been on loan from the Foundation to Philadelphia and sited at United Plaza in front of Duane Morris LLP near 17th and Market Streets since 2005. Now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the work will remain at its Center City location for several more years. It may remain there longer, or another site may be identified by the Museum during its ongoing comprehensive redevelopment and expansion planning.
February 4, 2021
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $50,000 to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC to help fund the research catalogue for their upcoming exhibition “The Double: Identity and Difference in Art Since 1900.”
February 4, 2021
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated one million dollars to the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio to endow the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fellowship for Diversity and Inclusion in the Arts.
July 10, 2020
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated an additional $75,000 to enhance the Foundation for Contemporary Art’s Emergency Grants COVID-19 Fund.
March 24, 2020
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $100,000 to the Foundation for Contemporary Art’s Emergency Grants COVID-19 Fund.
November 21, 2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $150,000 to the Colby College Museum of Art and the Nasher Museum of Art for their catalogue and public programming exhibition, Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948-1960.
September 25, 2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation provided $8,000 in support for Dieu Donné’s 2019 Annual Benefit in honor of Kenneth Tyler.
September 13, 2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation completes its promised partial gift of Roy Lichtenstein’s Modern Head special edition sculpture to the Ohio State University. Fabrication was funded by the Ohio Percent for Art Program.
From left: Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair of Studio Art Carmen Winant, Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Endowed Chair of Art History Jody Patterson. Photograph courtesy The Ohio State University.
September 11, 2019
The Ohio State University formally installs the two Roy Lichtenstein endowed professors, Carmen Winant, Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair of Studio Art, and Jody Patterson, Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Endowed Chair of Art History. On January 30, 2017, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announced a six million dollar gift to the university to permanently endow the named professorships.
June 4, 2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $10,000 towards production costs of Cunningham, a new documentary film by Allan Kovgan.
April 24, 2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $20,000 to the Whitney Museum of American Art for the Roy Lichtenstein Technical Study Day for conservation and practice held on June 26, 2019.
March 4, 2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $42,000 to the Portland Museum of Art to aid its conservation of the sculpture Brushstrokes, 1996.
February 20, 2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed $12,000 to the Centre Pompidou for their catalogue, Shunk-Kender L’art sous l’objectif (1957-1983).
February 7, 2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $179,000 to the Checkerboard Film Foundation to assist art and cultural documentary film production.
January 2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announced its gift of eleven Roy Lichtenstein sketchbooks to be co-owned and actively shared between the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Morgan Library and Museum.
Numbering 155 bound drawing sheets, documenting a complex of artistic thoughts and imagery, often with multiple sketches on each sheet, these books date from 1971 to 1994. These last eleven known sketchbooks will, not only, join the twenty Roy Lichtenstein sketchbooks already at the Morgan (previous gifts of Dorothy Lichtenstein) but also, will be available to the Whitney as an extended part of its own enormous Roy Lichtenstein Study Collection, on a rotating basis. Proposed by the Foundation as a way to strengthen the variety of Lichtenstein materials in New York City museums, we are delighted the Whitney and the Morgan have embraced their partnership in this public, artistic and scholarly resource.
2019
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation pledges $45,000 over three years to the Checkerboard Film Foundation to assist art and cultural documentary film production.
October 24, 2018
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $5,000,000 to the Archives of American Art for the immediate establishment of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Endowment for Access to Collections on Historically Underrepresented Art and Artists.
June 6, 2018
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announces the launch of two comprehensive, long-term collaborations, one with the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the other with the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art, Washington, DC, aimed at facilitating public access to the art and history of Roy Lichtenstein as well as the art of his time.
March 13, 2018
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $100,000 to Film Forum (NYC) to establish an endowed, named fund for showing films about art and artists.
March 6, 2018
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $25,000 to the Colby College Museum of Art and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University to support preliminary research travel for their planned exhibition The Early Work of Roy Lichtenstein (1940 to 1960) [working title].
February 21, 2018
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $7,500 to the Whitney Museum of American Art to assist curatorial research.
October 21, 2017
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $25,000 as a leadership grant to the Aspen Institute to assist research and publication activities of the Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative/AEFI. This relates to the forthcoming “Study Report Update 2018” and the planned publication “Portrait of the Artist as Philanthropist.” (working title).
October 12, 2017
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $25,000 to the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce, Puerto Rico to support keeping the museum open as a community resource and refuge during the Puerto Rico recovery period.
October 11, 2017
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation concluded the partial gift and partial purchase by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark of the large sculpture:
Endless Drip, 1995, fabricated 2006
Painted and fabricated aluminum
147 ¼ x 13 ½ x 4 ½ inches
Edition: AP
Partial purchase of The A.P. Moller and Chastine McKinney Moller Foundation and remainder gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
July 18, 2017
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $20,000 to the Getty Trust to facilitate creation of multiple reference paint sample “coupons” of all the colors used by Roy Lichtenstein for his sculpture, a repository initiated and directed by the Getty Conservation Institute.
July 18, 2017
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation pledged (and donated the first installment, and then in 2018 the second, of) a $300,000 grant obligation to be paid over 6 years to the Columbus Museum of Art to fund the Roy Lichtenstein Curatorial Fellowship, three (two-year) fellowships in a curatorial “incubator” for post-graduates in art history or a related field anticipating a career as a museum professional.
May 23, 2017
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated one million dollars to endow the Roy Lichtenstein Award of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
January 30, 2017
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated six million dollars for the creation of two endowed professorships at The Ohio State University.
January 28, 2016
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $50,000 to the exhibition Merce Cunningham: Common Time at the Walker Art Center.
2016
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation pledges $45,000 over three years to the Checkerboard Film Foundation to assist documentary film production.
2015
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $20,000 to the exhibition International Pop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
July 2015
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation completes its promised partial gift of Roy Lichtenstein’s collage Table with Two Vases of Flowers (Study), 1977 to the Museum of Modern Art’s The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection.
February 18, 2015
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $75,000 to Artstor as lead support of the James Dee Archives project.
2014-2015
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $250,000 to the Archives of American Art as lead support to digitize a portion of the Leo Castelli Gallery records.
June 30, 2014
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announces partial gift to and partial purchase by the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Five Brushstrokes, 1983-84 (fabricated 2012)
Gift of Robert L. and Marjorie J. Mann Fund, Partial Gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
December 19, 2013
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated a trove of over 250,000 photographs and materials, rescued in 2006 and subsequently catalogued by the Foundation, to major institutions in the U.S., France and England.
October 14, 2013
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announced partial gift to and partial purchase by the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Five Brushstrokes, 1984/2010 (AP)
Gift of Sydney and Walda Besthoff and Partial Gift of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
May 26, 2013
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $75,000, over three years, to the Aspen Institute to help develop and establish sustained dissemination of the Institute’s National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations.
March 21, 2013
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation contributed $30,000 to the American Friends of the Centre Georges Pompidou for enhancements to their Roy Lichtenstein retrospective catalogue.
January 30, 2013
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $25,000 to the Ohio State University’s The Adrienne and Sid Chafetz Printmaker’s Residency Fellowship Fund.
January 30, 2013
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $10,000 to the Canton (Ohio) Museum of Art to assist publication of the catalogue for their retrospective exhibition of the artist Joseph O’Sickey.
2011-2012
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation provided financial support to the Whitney Museum of American Art for the conservation on Three Landscapes, 1970-1971.
October 11, 2011
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $25,000 to the Aspen Institute for dissemination and test of a professional development study for new artist foundations.
October 2011
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announced its gift, and partial purchase by the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce, Puerto Rico, of Brushstrokes in Flight, 1984 (fabricated 2010).
January 2010
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $7,500 to The MIT Press in support of Hall of Mirrors, Roy Lichtenstein and the Face of Painting in the 1960s, a scholarly publication by Professor Graham Bader.
January 13, 2007
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $50,000, over two years, to help support the Aspen Institute’s National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations.
October 2005
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $65,000 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to assist public programming of its Robert Rauschenberg exhibition.
February 2005
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announced partial sale and remainder gift (facilitated by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation) to the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mirror #3 (Six Panels), 1971
Anstiss and Ronald Krueck Fund for Contemporary Art, facilitated by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
May 12, 2004
The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation donated $10,000 to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in honor of Elyse and Stanley Grinstein.