VERO BEACH — It was a packed house for a lecture on pop art Friday at the Vero Beach Museum of Art’s new Titelman Gallery.
A crowd of 400 – 150 more than usual for a late September lecture — packed into the Leonhardt Auditorium to listen to museum curator Jay Williams speak on the exhibit he himself put together.
“Pop Art: a 21st Century Perspective,” is the inaugural exhibit in the new gallery space, named for long-time museum supporters Jim and Roberta Titelman. A video hook-up broadcast the couple snipping the ribbon on the gallery entrance as the audience watched some 100 feet away, applauding them moments later as they entered the lecture hall.
The exhibit of 32 works includes an Andy Warhol soup can painting from the museum’s permanent collection, as well as one of Jasper Johns’ iconic flag paintings. Other works are on loan from the Titelmans and another Vero family. Still more were shipped in from various museums and collections.
It was through the generosity of donors like the Titelmans that the museum’s new 20,000-square-foot wing was built. The gallery, accessed through the rear of the Schumann Gallery, is one of the few public spaces within the wing, built largely to bring the museum up to national standards for storing its collection, restoring and repairing art, preparing exhibits and moving works in and out of the museum.
