Roy Lichtenstein at the National Gallery of Art

Roy Lichtenstein, House I, model 1996
fabricated 1998, fabricated and painted aluminum
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation

Washington, DC—The Gallery has a long history with Roy Lichtenstein, beginning in the 1980s with the acquisition of several prints and the painting Cubist Still Life (1974). In 1987 Robert and Jane Meyerhoff, among Lichtenstein 's greatest patrons, promised their collection of postwar art to the Gallery, which will make the museum a key repository of the artist 's work. When the Gallery 's Sculpture Garden opened in 1998 it featured one of the artist 's most remarkable and popular creations, House I (1996), a gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. Today more than 364 works by Lichtenstein are in the Gallery 's permanent collection, with some 15 more works, mostly paintings, still to come from the Meyerhoff collection.

The Gallery has held two previous exhibitions of Lichtenstein 's work. In 1995 it organized The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein, the first comprehensive look at his graphic work in 20 years, and published a catalogue raisonné of his prints. In 2005, eight years after the artist 's death, Lichtenstein 's family and the Lichtenstein Foundation gave the Gallery 13 drawings, all of them studies for paintings in the Meyerhoff collection; the Gallery featured them in an exhibition later that year.