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Joan Kron, the Philadelphia arts organizer who commissioned Roy Lichtenstein’s 1967 “Super Sunset Billboard,” is recounting the project in an interview ahead of her memoir’s release this December. A remake of the billboard is on view in the Whitney Museum’s Lichtenstein retrospective, bringing renewed attention to Kron’s role in early Pop Art projects.
Joan Kron, 98, is revisiting the story behind Roy Lichtenstein’s “Super Sunset Billboard” in an interview ahead of her memoir’s planned December release. Kron proposed the billboard project in Philadelphia in 1967; a remake of the work is now on view in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s retrospective Roy Lichtenstein: Like New.
Kron told Hyperallergic that she proposed putting art on billboards across Philadelphia while serving on the committee for the city’s 1967 Arts Festival. The idea met resistance, including from the city planning department, which was trying to remove billboards. Kron and her collaborator, Audrey Sabol, pursued the project independently and formed a committee to defend the use of billboards for art.
The organizers could not secure an available commercial billboard: Walter Stait, who owned billboards in the area, offered space, but told Kron they were all rented. The project found another site in a handball backboard in Sabol’s backyard. Kron said Lichtenstein had already offered a sunset image, and the backboard’s shape matched it. Stait painted the work, and the organizers held a party to publicize their proposal.
Kron recalled that the project attracted coverage and skepticism. She and Lichtenstein appeared on a Philadelphia Museum of Art radio program, where host Ralph Collier doubted that billboard owners would donate space for art. Kron later pointed to Art Everywhere UK, a two-week campaign in Britain about 40 years later, and a similar US effort a year after that, as evidence that the broader idea gained traction. The source does not establish that either campaign directly resulted from her 1967 project.
A Billboard Idea Finds New Visibility
The Whitney display connects a current museum retrospective with an earlier, less widely credited part of Pop Art’s public history: the work of organizers who made opportunities for artists outside established galleries. Kron’s account shows how an idea rejected by local officials could still become a visible public artwork through an improvised alternative site.
The story also broadens the picture of who helped shape Pop Art in the early 1960s and after. Kron and Sabol were not only observers of the movement; their organizing at Philadelphia’s Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association helped bring artists and projects to audiences. The memoir may add personal detail, while the billboard remake gives museum visitors a chance to encounter one result of that work.
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Kron’s Philadelphia Pop Art Projects
In 1962, Kron and Sabol organized Art ’63: A New Vocabulary at Philadelphia’s YM/YWHA. According to the source report, the exhibition included artists such as Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg, and opened days before Sidney Janis Gallery’s The New Realists. The organizers’ work also included producing artists’ multiples and hosting the Velvet Underground’s first Philadelphia concert.
Kron later became a journalist for New York Magazine, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and a contributing editor at large at Allure. Her upcoming memoir, The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art, is described in the report as a collection of stories about artists including Andy Warhol, Christo and Robert Rauschenberg. The report also says she is working on a second documentary.
“I presented the idea to put art on billboards on every artery in the city.”
— Joan Kron, speaking to Hyperallergic
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What the Record Leaves Open
The source describes the Whitney work as a remake of the 1967 billboard, but does not specify who produced the remake, when it was made, or how it was reconstructed. It also does not give the dates for the current retrospective or state how long the work will remain on view.
Kron’s account is an interview published ahead of her memoir, and the recollections are attributed to her. The report does not independently document the full planning history or establish a direct link between her effort and the later Art Everywhere campaigns. The memoir’s exact release date in December is not provided.
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Memoir and Museum Display
The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art is scheduled for release in December, according to the report. Its publication is expected to provide further first-person accounts of Kron’s encounters with artists and her work as an organizer, though the source does not list a specific publication date.
The Lichtenstein remake is currently part of the Whitney’s Roy Lichtenstein: Like New retrospective. Readers seeking practical details such as exhibition dates and the memoir’s release day will need to check the museum and publisher, as those details are not included in the source report.
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Key Questions
Who is Joan Kron?
Joan Kron is a former arts organizer and journalist. She helped organize early Pop Art projects in Philadelphia with Audrey Sabol and later wrote for publications including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
What was “Super Sunset Billboard”?
It was a 1967 billboard project based on an image Roy Lichtenstein offered. After commercial billboard space proved unavailable, Kron and Sabol used a handball backboard in Sabol’s backyard as the display site.
Where can visitors see the Lichtenstein billboard now?
A remake is on view in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s retrospective Roy Lichtenstein: Like New. The source report does not provide the exhibition’s dates or visitor information.
When will Kron’s memoir be released?
The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art is planned for release in December. The report does not give an exact publication day.
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