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, 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 this took place before the pair pioneered art on billboards with Roy Lichtenstein.

A first-hand account and 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.

Joan Kron was born and raised in New York City. She graduated in costume design from the Yale School of Drama (now the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale) before moving to Philadelphia. As a founding member and head of the YM/YWHA Arts Council, she co-produced several Pop Art exhibitions. In her 40s, she wrote for Philadelphia magazine, New York Magazine, and the New York Times, later joining the Wall Street Journal, where she initiated the fashion beat. She served as editor-in-chief of Avenue magazine, before joining Conde Nast’s Allure, where she created the plastic-surgery beat. She went on to produce and direct the prize-winning documentary film Take My Nose Please! Comediennes and Plastic Surgery. She is the author of several works, including High-Tech: the Industrial Style and Source Book for the Home, with Suzanne Slesin (Clarkson Potter, 1978) and Home-Psych: The Social Psychology of Home and Decoration (Clarkson Potter, 1983). Now 98, she lives in Miami, Florida, and is at work on her second film, Weapon of Beauty: The Cloak and Dagger History of Botox.

Fall 2026

Art, Memoir

10⅜ x 9½ inches

340 pages

ISBN: 9781938461774