New York Before Thanksgiving: Scharf, Lichtenstein and More

Posted By Contributors on Oct 28, 2026 in EVENTS, NATIONAL, THE ARTS, THE HOMAGE

The Brief

Kenny Scharf’s free Scary and the Dancers! fills Rockefeller Center through November 1, and the Whitney’s Roy Lichtenstein: Like New runs through May 10, 2027 — the two NYC art exhibitions of fall 2026 to see before Thanksgiving. Christie’s follows on the same Rockefeller Center campus, with previews from November 7, the 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17 and the 21st Century Evening Sale on November 19, led by The Collection of Antonio Homem Sonnabend and its Lichtensteins.

Roy Lichtenstein, Masterpiece, 1962, in Roy Lichtenstein: Like New at the Whitney Museum of American Art. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, all rights reserved. Courtesy: AQ Images – AGC 2026

By EC, Editor, The Art Quarterly

The tree has not arrived at Rockefeller Center yet. Something stranger has: Scary, a 34-foot inflatable by Kenny Scharf, grinning over Center Plaza while six air-dancer sculptures flail around him like a car-lot promotion that wandered into a Pop Surrealist dream.

It is the loudest invitation in a season that rewards the trip before Thanksgiving. Six days after Scary comes down, Christie’s opens its November previews on the same campus; in between sits the Whitney’s case for Roy Lichtenstein, the artist who took Pop’s lead and never gave it back. The thread is Pop: who started it, who carries it and what it is worth now.

Where is Kenny Scharf at Rockefeller Center, and for how long?

Through November 1, free. Scary and the Dancers!, presented by Art Production Fund and Rockefeller Center, is Scharf’s largest sculptural commission to date, with murals and sculptural works in the lobbies of 10, 30, 45 and 50 Rockefeller Plaza and more than 100 artist-designed flags overhead.

Works by Kenny Scharf in a gallery installation. Courtesy: AQ Images – Staff Photographer 2026

Scharf, born in Los Angeles in 1958, came up in the East Village of the 1980s beside Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Details at Rockefeller Center and Art Production Fund; follow @kennyscharf.

What is Roy Lichtenstein: Like New at the Whitney?

Roy Lichtenstein: Like New opened October 11 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, and runs through May 10, 2027. It gathers more than 130 works by Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), from the early 1940s through the 1990s, including Masterpiece (1962) and Drowning Girl (1963). For the first time, it reunites every work from Lichtenstein’s first exhibition of Pop paintings, at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1962, Engagement Ring (1961) among them.

Roy Lichtenstein, Engagement Ring, 1961, in Roy Lichtenstein: Like New at the Whitney. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, all rights reserved. Courtesy: AQ Images – AGC 2026

The thesis is in the title. Lichtenstein borrowed, enlarged and reframed — comics, advertisements, Monet’s cathedrals, his own motifs — and the exhibition, co-curated by the artist Alex Da Corte, hangs him beside Sturtevant, Richard Pettibone and Louise Lawler. Ocula’s Louise Benson was cooler, writing that the Whitney “successfully repackages Lichtenstein once again.” Plan the visit at whitney.org and follow @whitneymuseum.

What is the Lichtenstein market saying this November?

At Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale in New York on May 18, 2026, Anxious Girl (1964) sold for $46.06 million against an estimate of $40 million–$60 million, per HENI. The artist’s auction record remains Nurse (1964), $95 million at Christie’s New York in November 2015.

Christie’s returns to Pop this month. The 21st Century Evening Sale, November 19 at 7 p.m., opens with The Collection of Antonio Homem Sonnabend — works by Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Jeff Koons from the family behind Sonnabend Gallery, among Pop’s earliest champions. The 20th Century Evening Sale, November 17 at 6:30 p.m., carries the Clive Davis Collection’s Warhol portrait of David Hockney. Both previews open November 7 at Rockefeller Center.

How does Alex G Cao pay homage to Lichtenstein?

Pop has always been a conversation with what came before, and Lichtenstein opened it. Alex G Cao’s photomosaics continue it as homage: each builds one image out of thousands of smaller ones, honoring the artists who came first. In LICHTENSTEIN vs LICHTENSTEIN PORTRAIT (2011), Lichtenstein’s own pictorial language becomes Cao’s raw material; in A THOUSAND KISSES DEEP, LICHTENSTEIN vs WARHOL (2014), he sets Pop’s two leaders in dialogue.

For the source itself, GALLERY M offers Lichtenstein’s Water Lilies with Willows, 1992, screen-printed enamel on stainless steel in the artist’s painted frame, 58 x 104 inches framed, signed, numbered and dated 5/23 from an edition of 23 — Lichtenstein turning Monet into Pop, the Like New argument in one object. See the Alex G Cao collection or inquire with Collector Services at 303-331-8400 or online.

Roy Lichtenstein, Water Lilies with Willows, 1992, screen-printed enamel on stainless steel in the artist’s painted frame, edition 5/23. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, all rights reserved. Courtesy: GALLERY M

Which other NYC art exhibitions should collectors see in fall 2026?

At the Met Fifth Avenue, Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous (through January 31, 2027) gives the couple equal walls: 74 works by Lee Krasner and 48 by Jackson Pollock. At MoMA, Brancusi: The Artist and His Studio runs through February 27, 2027, with rarely lent sculptures from the Centre Pompidou’s Atelier Brancusi.

What should collectors do now?

See Scharf by Sunday, November 1. Book the Whitney, the Met and MoMA for any weekend before Thanksgiving, and land between November 7 and 19 to walk the Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips previews. Lichtenstein made a career of proving a copy could be an original. Scary, bobbing over Rockefeller Plaza for a few more days, makes the other argument: some things you have to see in person.

The Art Quarterly has been published since 2000 by GALLERY M, a primary-market fine art dealer in Denver’s Cherry Creek North since 1996.

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