An Evening with Joan Kron in conversation with Suzanne Slesin

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About The Book

Through a rich collection of personal stories and an extensive private photographic archive, The Renegade Housewives of the 1960s offers insight into Joan Kron's life and the vibrant creative landscape of the 1960s in Philadelphia and beyond.

In the 1960s, Joan Kron and her friend and business partner, Audrey Sabol, made history, collaborating with an emerging group of artists—Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Niki de Saint Phalle, George Segal, Jean Tinguely, and Andy Warhol, to name a few. In 1962, Kron and Sabol presented the first group show of Pop Art on the East Coast at the YM/YWHA in Philadelphia, beating museums and New York galleries. They also went into business, producing multiples with Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, and Marisol Escobar. Sabol and Kron’s swan song was the Museum of Merchandise; it had a storefront by an unknown named Christo and a trouble-making product for sale by rising star Andy Warhol. All of this took place before the pair pioneered art on billboards with Roy Lichtenstein.

An extraordinarily written visual history, The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art™: A Memoir of the 1960s, is an inspiring tale of invention and reinvention, relatable to many women. Through never-before-seen documents, Joan Kron’s memoir recounts how she and Sabol became two of the most daring and revolutionary “housewives” of the 1960s. This is a new eyewitness account of the 1960s art scene by one of its last living participants. With wit and verve, Kron shares a collection of personal stories and an extensive private photographic archive, from her early years in costume design to her mid- and late-career adventures as a local arts revolutionary and a reporter and editor at prominent New York publications.

About The Author

Born and raised in New York City, JOAN KRON studied costume design at the Yale Drama School (now the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale) and worked at NBC TV on The Howdy Doody Show and other shows before moving to Philadelphia. There, as a founding member and creative force within the Arts Council of the YM / YWHA in the 1960s, she co-produced a series of groundbreaking Pop Art exhibitions and multiples with her friend and business partner Audrey Sabol. Their exploits are the subject of The Renegade Housewives of Pop Art. In her forties, Kron began writing in swift succession for Philadelphia magazine, New York magazine, and the New York Times, later joining the Wall Street Journal where she established the fashion beat. After four years as editor-in-chief of Avenue, she joined Allure and created the plastic-surgery beat. That lead to her award-winning documentary Take My Nose Please! Her written works include the seminal High-Tech: The Industrial Style and Source Book for the Home. Now 98, she lives in Miami and is working on her second film, Weapon of Beauty: The Cloak and Dagger History of Botox.