The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art

In the 1960s, Joan Kron and her friend and business partner, Audrey Sabol, made history, collaborating with an emerging group of artists—Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Niki de Saint Phalle, George Segal, Jean Tinguely, and Andy Warhol, to name a few. In 1962, Kron and Sabol presented the first group show of Pop Art on the East Coast at the YM/YWHA in Philadelphia, beating museums and New York galleries. They also went into business, producing multiples with Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, and Marisol Escobar. Sabol and Kron’s swan song was the Museum of Merchandise; it had a storefront by an unknown named Christo and a trouble-making product for sale by rising star Andy Warhol. All of this took place before the pair pioneered art on billboards with Roy Lichtenstein.

An extraordinarily written visual history, The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art™: A Memoir of the 1960s, is an inspiring tale of invention and reinvention, relatable to many women. Through never-before-seen documents, Joan Kron’s memoir recounts how she and Sabol became two of the most daring and revolutionary “housewives” of the 1960s. This is a new eyewitness account of the 1960s art scene by one of its last living participants. With wit and verve, Kron shares a collection of personal stories and an extensive private photographic archive, from her early years in costume design to her mid- and late-career adventures as a local arts revolutionary and a reporter and editor at prominent New York publications.