New British Museum exhibition The American Dream celebrates 'can-do' attitude of Sixties USA

The “can-do” attitude of Sixties America is going on show in a new exhibition at the British Museum next year.

The American Dream: Pop To The Present features more than 200 prints by 70 artists including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

Among the works on show are Warhol’s images of Marilyn Monroe and Rauschenberg’s huge Sky Garden which he made after Nasa invited him to Cape Canaveral to watch the launch of Apollo 11 which landed the first men on the moon. Lead curator Stephen Coppel said “state of the art” technology in the Sixties enabled artists to make prints that “rivalled paintings in their ambition and scale”. He added: “There was the technology, the ambition and the sheer can-do possibilities.”

Many of the works come from the museum’s own collection with others loaned from institutions including New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

British Museum director Hartwig Fischer said the show, which is supported by Morgan Stanley and the Terra Foundation for American Art, highlighted its “extraordinary holdings of American prints and drawings”.

The American Dream: Pop To The Present runs from March 9 to July 18.

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