Designed in a joint venture between Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Davis Brody Bond, the new U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, Mexico will be among the largest U.S. embassy complexes in the world. The design for the campus adheres to the highest security requirements while reflecting values of generosity and democracy.
In 2017 Dorothy Lichtenstein and the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announced their extraordinary gift to FAPE of Greene Street Mural, which has been installed in the main diplomatic entrance at the new U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.
In December 1983, Roy Lichtenstein created Greene Street Mural, an unprecedented, site-specific, and temporary wall painting measuring 18 × 96 ½ feet at the Castelli Gallery at 142 Greene Street in New York City. In accordance with the artist's intention, the work was destroyed after the six-week show. More than 30 years later, the Gagosian Gallery presented to a new generation of viewers a full-scale painted replica of the original work, based on documentation from Lichtenstein's studio and produced under the supervision of his former studio assistant. In keeping with the momentous spirit of the original project, the replica was destroyed at the close of the exhibition.
In Greene Street Mural, Lichtenstein layered pervasive images from his pop lexicon—marble-patterned composition notebooks, cartoonish brushstrokes, and Swiss cheese—with new motifs, including the Neo-Geo tropes of the Perfect/Imperfect paintings; faux woodblock shading patterns; and office items including filing cabinets, envelopes, and folding chairs.
Echoing the self-reflexive and art-historical juxtapositions of the Artist's Studio paintings made during the same period, the mural conflates citations from Lichtenstein's own oeuvre with references to Picasso and Brancusi, Art Deco motifs, and depictions of the Great Pyramids. This heady mix epitomizes Lichtenstein's ability to absorb anything and everything that caught his eye into his constantly evolving artistic idiom.
,
Agnes Gund, The Honorable Ronald S. Lauder and Jo Carole Lauder, Nancy and Howard Marks and Daniel Romualdez
Images © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Greene Street Mural
In 1998 Dorothy Lichtenstein donated a painting by her husband, Reflections on Señorita, as the lead gift to FAPE’s millennium GIFT TO THE NATION Collection. The work is on display at the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence.
by artists Lynda Benglis,
Alexander Calder,
Jim Dine,
Roberto Juarez,
Alberto Mijangos,
Louise Nevelson,
Claes Oldenburg,
and
Man Ray that will be installed in the embassy when it opens.
U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, Mexico
Paseo de la Reforma 305, Colonia Cuauhtémoc
06500 Mexico, D.F.
