Marian Goodman’s Multiples, Inc. Banners to Resurface at New York’s Independent 20th Century

Independent is preparing to host the highly anticipated 2026 edition of Independent 20th Century at the Breuer, the former home of the Whitney Museum and, later, the Met, before it became Sotheby’s U.S. headquarters last year. The September art fair‘s move from the sumptuous Beaux-Arts interiors of Casa Cipriani downtown to the landmark modernist building further anchors it in the history of the 20th Century while also allowing for a more expansive format. This year, 56 exhibitors (versus the 31 that participated in the 2025 edition) will bring work by more than 130 artists to the fair in highly curated presentations spanning solo surveys of canonical and overlooked figures and thematic presentations focused on specific movements and moments.

One of the highlights will be an unprecedented presentation of special editions published by Marian Goodman, first through the Betsy Ross Flag and Banner Company and later under her own imprint, Multiples, Inc., before she founded her legendary gallery. The presentation will include a series of artist-designed banners by figures who were emerging at the time of their production but would become some of the most prominent names of their generation, including Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Gerald Laing, Arman, Helen Frankenthaler, Miriam Schapiro, Marisol, Jim Dine and James Rosenquist.

Between 1963 and 1972, Multiples, Inc. commissioned leading artists to create designs specifically for the banner medium. “Banners represent a new original edition art medium: signed, limited edition, large wall hangings created in felt and vinyl by foremost contemporary artists,” reads a document that accompanied the works’ original release. Each artist conceived the design and selected the materials and colors, overseeing its execution by artisans to ensure that every banner in the edition would remain consistent with the others.

Multiples, Inc. ultimately commissioned 50 different banners, produced in editions of 20 or 30, each signed and numbered by the artist on a label attached to the reverse. The banners were designed to be display-ready, neatly suspended as they were between polished aluminum bars.

It was a clever strategy meant to create an access point to artists who would become established names, thereby laddering offerings across different price tiers and making contemporary art available to a wider audience, including middle-class households. It points to a democratic vision of the art world—more accessible, more personal—something that may have helped Goodman build a loyal audience and collector base by kick-starting relationships that could deepen and grow over time.

Goodman entered the gallery world rather informally in the 1960s, after marrying and having two children. Her first art-dealing endeavor involved organizing a fundraising sale of artists’ prints for the New York school her children attended. The initiative proved so successful that it evolved into a cooperative she founded with four other Upper West Side mothers that offered prints and lithographs by well-known contemporary artists in editions overseen by the artists themselves. That developed into Multiples, Inc., founded in 1965 by five partners, some of whom had already been producing editioned banners with contemporary artists through the Betsy Ross Flag and Banner Company.

Multiples, Inc. opened its first gallery on Madison Avenue, near 74th Street. In 1974, Goodman assumed sole ownership of the company, which continued to operate until 1992, even after she opened her eponymous gallery in 1977. One of its most important projects was Artists & Photographs (1970), a boxed edition bringing together work by 19 American and European artists such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Smithson, Jan Dibbets, Dan Graham, Bruce Nauman and Ed Ruscha. Many were using photography not to make conventional fine art but as a means of documenting conceptual actions, landscapes and ideas. Produced in an edition of 1,200, the project was not commercially successful at the time but would later become highly sought after. (Goodman described it as one of the most exciting publishing projects of her career.)

Through Multiples, Inc., the dealer was also involved in several now-iconic editions, including Andy Warhol’s Mao portfolio, which she co-published with Castelli Graphics in 1972. Goodman took trial proofs of the series to Art Basel that June, several months before the official edition of 250 was released in November, using the fair to introduce the project and secure early buyers.

The banners, conceived as part of the same drive to make contemporary art available in editioned and relatively affordable formats, also appreciated over time. A Roy Lichtenstein banner that originally sold for $500 later sold for $4,200, according to one archival document from the 1969 touring exhibition across New Zealand. Some editions of these banners entered the collections of major museums such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art, as well as important corporate and institutional collections including those of Chase Manhattan Bank, Coca-Cola, The World Bank, Allied Chemical, Wells, Rich, Greene and Radcliffe College, alongside numerous private collections. Archival images document banners installed at MoMA.

Independent director Elizabeth Dee told Observer that while the gallery has been preserving and digitizing Goodman’s archive for a publication, these banners had not been publicly shown together in decades. When they invited the gallery to develop the presentation, the Breuer immediately felt like the ideal context. Because both the building and the fair are centered on a more concentrated historical period, the venue offers an opportunity to present the Multiples, Inc. material at a meaningful scale while also introducing the associated publication and scholarship.

“Exhibiting the Banners at Independent 20th Century feels serendipitous because Multiples, Inc. opened its first storefront just a block away from the Breuer on Madison Avenue in 1965,” Junette Teng, managing partner at Marian Goodman Gallery, told Observer. “With the gallery celebrating its 50th anniversary next year, the banners, shown together for the first time in decades, mark a full-circle moment, taking us back to our origins.”

Some of the banners presented at Independent embody the quintessence of their respective artists’ aesthetics: Warhol’s signature Campbell’s soup can, Indiana’s interpretation of the American flag with 51 stars rendered in appliquéd felt, Wesselmann’s bold depiction of the female form and Lichtenstein’s Pistol banner, showing a hand cradling a revolver, which counterplays Arman’s Revolvers, an accumulation of silver vinyl guns set against a bright yellow ground.

The gallery will also showcase a screen-printed tableau of a romantic couple in a forest by Marisol, as well as a banner by Schapiro incorporating needlepoint, drawn from her iconic Shrine series. A vibrant orange, olive, black and sky-blue abstract banner by Frankenthaler perfectly captures her understanding of abstraction as emotive landscape and atmospheric climate, while Lichtenstein’s signature printed dots articulate the clouds in his moonlit seascape.

The presentation traces the trajectory of banners as an art form, beginning with their role in representing artists at a particular historical moment—advertising art exhibitions outside buildings in New York in the early 1960s—before becoming art objects in their own right while still maintaining the aura of accessibility. When we spoke to Teng, the gallery was still finalizing prices. (Goodman passed away in January, and the presentation follows Christie’s May sale of the dealer’s own art collection, which included top-tier works by Gerhard Richter that realized $78.8 million, led by Kerze at $35.1 million.)

This part of Goodman’s history is not widely known, Dee pointed out, because the material has not been publicly shown together in decades. But they reveal a lesser-known aspect of her art-dealing practice and point to a broader history of how galleries and artists have used more accessible formats—including prints, multiples and banners—to reach audiences and cultivate collectors. Rather than requiring new buyers to enter the market through expensive one-of-a-kind works, editions and multiples provide a first point of access, allowing relationships with artists and galleries to deepen gradually.

Notably, Goodman brought European artists to New York at a moment when many had little recognition in the United States and were still emerging or relatively little known even in Europe. Artists who are now household names and canonical figures were, at the time, still in the process of building international audiences. Key to the success of Goodman’s model was her willingness to make their work available to broader audiences—a strategy that feels particularly relevant today, as the art world once again tries to understand how to draw new collectors into the market. “I think it’s such an interesting thing to look at today, especially as we’re trying to figure out how to bring people into art,” Dee said.

It’s an idea the luxury industry has explored extensively but which the art world is only now beginning to reconsider—even as artists acting independently look for new ways to engage with potential collectors. One recent example is artist Cj Hendry, whose viral “Pastels” exhibition at Salon 94 and her Phillips drop of Real Monsters trading cards offer a laddered price structure that has something for everyone. The same logic increasingly characterizes the markets of artists such as Takashi Murakami, KAWS, Daniel Arsham and Kasing Lung. Not coincidentally, these artists are especially popular among younger collectors looking not just to acquire art but also to become part of likeminded communities.

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