The “Renegade Housewife” of Pop Art

Stories from a pioneering journalist and art worker, John Yau on Valerio Adami, and books of warp and weft for your reading list.

At age 98, Joan Kron has lived many lives. She invented plastic surgery journalism, helped Andy Warhol make his first perfume, hosted the Velvet Underground’s first Philly concert, and commissioned Roy Lichtenstein’s “Super Sunset Billboard.”

That 1967 artwork, a remake of which is on view in the late Pop artist’s exhibition at the Whitney, is one of countless projects she has wrangled into being from behind the scenes. In an exclusive interview today, the indefatigable Kron regales reporter Isabella Segalovich with a slice of those riotous stories, with more to come in her memoir titled The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art — I’ll be first in line at the bookstore.

Also today: WPA-era murals by Black artists in Harlem are finally restored, the art world descends on a champagne-soaked Frieze London, we recommend books on the rich histories of textile art, and critic John Yau finds echoes of Pop art in the paintings of Valerio Adami.

Ahead of her memoir’s release, we talk to Joan Kron about Andy Warhol, beating Sidney Janis to the punch, and why she calls herself a “renegade housewife” of Pop Art. | Isabella Segalovich

UCLA’s MFA in Media Arts Now Accepting Applications

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Asia NOW 2026 Brings Contemporary Asian Art to Paris

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His syncretic style melds Pop Art’s cool, outlined forms with expressionism’s figural distortions, resulting in a perturbing ambiguity. | John Yau

Ruby City Presents “Generative Disruption: Feminist Art from the Collection”

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Among them champagne, new money, and an artist’s custom-scented bathroom installations. | Naomi Polonsky

“I genuinely want any child that walks through this door to be and feel protected,” the East New York-raised artist told Hyperallergic. | Rhea Nayyar

Half a century after the Warhol film star’s death, writer and critic Cynthia Carr brings Darling’s life to light in an empathetic, well-researched new book. | Alexis Clements