A rare and monumental sculpture by the late American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein is now installed at 7 World Trade Center, after a brief residency down the street. This dovetails nicely with the excellent retrospective on now at the Whitney, which, if you haven’t seen already, is a must. (You’ve got till May, but don’t let it slip by.)

Lichtenstein’s “Brushstrokes” is among his most iconic sculptures, translating his celebrated Brushstroke paintings of the 1960s into three dimensions, 30 feet high. Both the paintings and sculpture are commentaries on Abstract Expressionism and reflect the humor of Lichtenstein’s five-decade inquiry into the mechanics of artmaking. (The Whitney show amplifies this with enlargements, juxtapositions, details and a mural riff/homage by Alex Da Corte.)

The sculpture is painted aluminum. When it was first installed at 3 WTC in 2025, it was about to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. The auction house thought the World Trade Center could be a wonderful place to showcase it, so they reached out to Larry and Klara Silverstein and asked if it could be displayed. The auction closed last November; not sure what it went for. Maybe the Silversteins bought it!

This adds to the public art all around the World Trade Center, much of it owned by Silverstein, who has a passion for showcasing and making art accessible in public spaces. Read more about other installations here.