Dorothy Lichtenstein, the widow of the great Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, died earlier this month at her home on Long Island. “An elegant and engaging woman who did not claim to have any artistic talent, Ms Lichtenstein redefined the image of the ‘artist’s widow’, a relentlessly maligned art-world type,” said The New York Times. Far from being controlling and grasping, as the cliché suggests, she gave most of her husband’s work away: “paintings and sculptures, piles of sketchbooks, file drawers bulging with correspondence, and even the building in Lower Manhattan in which Mr Lichtenstein’s last studio was located”. The main beneficiary was the Whitney Museum of American Art, which in 2018 received a gift of some 400 works. She also supervised a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s 5,500-work opus. Most…
