Exhibition charting American pop art opens at London's British Museum

One of the UK's first major exhibitions charting modern and contemporary American pop art opened at the British Museum in London this week, with works from New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Washington DC's National Gallery of Art.

The exhibition, which showcases about 200 works by 70 artists and runs through to June 18, looks at American pop art or printmaking over the past six decades, a period when the country's wealth, power and cultural influence had never been greater.

"In the first half of the show we are looking at pop, conceptualism, minimalism (and) abstraction. In the second part we are looking at various social issues within America (over) those six decades," Hugo Chapman, Simon Sainsbury Keeper of Prints & Drawings at the British Museum, told Reuters.

Employees pose at the entrance of the exhibition 'The American Dream: pop to the present' at the British Museum in London, Britain, March 6, 2017. Reuters

 

"I think the environment that brought (US President Donald) Trump's victory, you can see in this show," he added.

The exhibition, dubbed "The American Dream: Pop to the present", includes works by pop art legend Andy Warhol and others who shaped the movement, like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Chuck Close, Louise Bourgeois and Kara Walker.

"As a new president enters the White House and another chapter of US history begins, it feels like an apposite moment to consider how artists have reflected America as a nation over 50 tumultuous years," said Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum.