Roy before he was Lichtenstein: the path tobecoming a Pop Art titan began with Lichtenstein'scycling through a provocative range of visualculture, from fairy tales and children's and folk artto mythic forms of Americana, such as cowboysand Disney.Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948 1960is the first major museum exhibition to investigate theearly work of one of the best-known American artistsof the twentieth century. The exhibition will includeapproximately eighty works from the artist's fruitfuland formative early career, many never before seen bythe public. The show and accompanying catalog willinclude paintings, drawings, sculptures, and printswhich reveal an artist, even in the earliest stagesof his career, with a keen interest in visual culture,culling with a critical eye from a wide range ofsources. These inspirations were the essential but little-known precursors to the artist's later sourcing of comicbooks and advertisements. Likewise, his exploration ofabstraction, just before the artist's abrupt turn to PopArt in 1961, straddles the line between unabashed lyri-cism and wry critique of second-generation AbstractExpressionism.The catalog, with new scholarship by leading expertsin the field, provides a new understanding of Lichten-stein's influential techniques of appropriation andoffers the opportunity to more fully assess the artisticand cultural dynamism of postwar America.