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A federal judge ruled late Wednesday that an accidentally released memo, in which lawyers for the Trump administration had detailed the weaknesses of the government’s strategy to end congestion pricing in New York City, cannot be used in court.

The decision closes an embarrassing chapter for the U.S. Department of Transportation, after its legal counsel in April mistakenly uploaded the document and effectively revealed the agency’s game plan to kill the new tolling program.

But the ruling was something of a hollow victory for the administration, in that many of the points raised in the memo were no secret to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the operator of the toll program, before the document had been exposed.

Lawyers for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan wrote and uploaded the memo, which caused a tense rift between them and the Transportation Department. A day after the document was released, a department spokeswoman called the lawyers incompetent and suggested that they might have tried to sabotage the case.

The Transportation Department said it had replaced the lawyers involved in the accident, but recent court filings still listed them as counsel in the case.

In his ruling, Judge Lewis J. Liman of the Southern District of New York, wrote that the transit authority and its backers had already challenged the federal government on similar grounds, and that “there was never a concern that the experienced counsel in this case would need to freeload off the arguments of the United States attorney’s office.”

Still, Judge Liman partly ruled in favor of the federal government, noting that the memo could not be used as evidence in the case because it contained privileged attorney-client communications and that its disclosure had been inadvertent.

“There is no reason to doubt that the attorneys engaged in a late-night filing simply selected the wrong file for upload, without any intent to make the selected document public,” the judge wrote. Shortly after the mistake was made, the memo was removed from the court docket; the judge’s ruling will make the document public again.

The Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to a request for comment and directed questions about its legal counsel to the Justice Department.

In February, the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said that he was withdrawing federal approval for the congestion pricing program, which charges most drivers $9 to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street. He argued that the plan went beyond the scope of a federal program used to authorize it, and that the toll should not be used primarily to fund mass transit.

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In the 11-page memo, lawyers from the Southern District of New York warned that the Transportation Department’s legal arguments were “exceedingly likely” to fail, and that it should change tack.

The M.T.A., which runs mass transit in New York and has sued to stop the federal government’s intervention in the program, has argued that the secretary’s reasoning contradicts years of public review and study of the plan, which was approved by the Biden administration last year. Tolling began on Jan. 5.

Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School who supports congestion pricing, said the judge’s decision not to allow the memo to be used in court was immaterial, because its contents had already been so widely shared.

“The M.T.A. can’t cite it, but it needn’t — the judge is fully aware of its contents,” he said in an email.

Kathryn Freed, a retired New York State Supreme Court justice who is part of a group that has sued to stop congestion pricing, said that such memos detailing legal strategy were common in lawsuits. In this instance, she added, the document would have little effect on the legal battle over the tolls because it did not contain new information or arguments and it did not address the larger issue of the program’s negative influence on the city.

“The ruling is more important in the court of public opinion than in the court of law,” she said.

The decision comes after a wave of good news for the embattled tolling plan. Four months after the toll cameras were turned on, traffic in both central Manhattan and surrounding areas is down; fewer vehicles are on the roads; the local economy has not suffered, as some critics predicted; and the M.T.A. is on pace to finance $15 billion in transit repairs and improvements with revenue from the tolls.

But the program remains at risk. Mr. Duffy has threatened repeatedly that his office will withhold federal funding from a host of transportation projects in New York State if the program is not shut down. He has given Gov. Kathy Hochul until May 21 to stop the program, or else some funding will be withheld starting the following week. Ms. Hochul has vowed to keep charging the tolls.

The next major decision in the court case is whether Judge Liman will grant the M.T.A. a preliminary injunction forbidding the federal government from following through on its threats.

Tariffs busting your budget? One charming NYC shop is here to save your wallet — and your conscience.

Tucked away at 434 Sixth Ave. in the West Village, the Locavore Variety Store is helmed by “shop local” queen Caroline Weaver, an entrepreneur on a serious mission to change the way New Yorkers consume.

Since opening a year ago, the “shop about shopping” has become something of a gold mine for quirky, homegrown finds — sourced within 100 miles of the Big Apple.

Amid candy-colored decor, quirky displays show off 700 products from over 130 regional makers. There are household essentials — cleaning supplies, kitchen utensils — pantry staples like green goodies made by Eddie’s Pickles in Maspeth, Queens, and unusual notions and gifts like cigarette lighters made with Dum Dum gum wrappers by comedian and downtown denizen Amy Sedaris.

“I want to remind people that shopping is fun,” Weaver told The Post. “It’s about going out, experiencing our neighborhoods, discovering something new and having fun.”

Weaver’s retail journey started with the beloved CW Pencil Enterprise, a cult-favorite stationery spot she ran from 2014 to 2021 on the Lower East Side.

But when the iconic address shuttered during the pandemic, the city cheerleader found herself dreaming of the ultimate buy-local boutique — giving birth to her latest retail baby not long after.

“The shop was always meant to be my demonstration of what shopping local really means — that it’s friendly, it’s fun, it’s about things that are made in our communities and that have stories,” Weaver explained.

“That’s the storytelling part of it, and that’s something Amazon and big box stores will never be able to compete with. My hope is that as the economic squeeze tightens and small businesses start to struggle, people will really begin to see why it matters to shop local,” Weaver said.

The selection is as unexpected as it is charming — think Wiffle Balls straight outta Shelton, Connecticut, or wool dusters created by a Bronx family business, all waiting under the watchful, cardboard-cutout eye of another local staple: the pigeon.

And Weaver has opted to keep things as simple as they are amusing, featuring grocery store-style shelving sourced from a Canarsie warehouse — she even sanded and stained the floor herself.

But this isn’t just a smile-inducing spot for a browse — the passionate proprietor wants to spark excitement in her customers for a full exploration of Gotham’s gargantuan selection of worthy mom-and-pop shops.

Since 1990, big corporations have slashed 4 million jobs, but small businesses added 8 million, according to the Small Business Administration.

As that number grows, Weaver has made it her job to catalog every independent retail space in the city — hoofing it through all five boroughs to track down all the hidden gems, going back to 2021. Four years and 14,000 stops later, she’s almost done.

To save New Yorkers a ton of legwork, she’s put out the Locavore Guide — a pint-sized version of her epic database, spotlighting 670 of the city’s coolest indie shops like Village Revival Records in Greenwich Village and Beadkraft in Chelsea, to name a few.

And you can shop her store without even leaving the house — Weaver also recently caved and launched an online operation to bolster revenue and make her finds accessible beyond NYC.

Katie McClure, who helped Weaver set up her entertaining emporium, said the Locavore has become more than just a retail space.

“People who come in here are friends. I’ve made friends with customers, and also very randomly, a lot of people run into each other here,” McClure said.

Emily Dean, who started working at the Locavore before its official opening, said the close-knit nature of the shop and its locally made items are what make it special.

“People come in and say things like, ‘Oh, I know the person who made this,’ and I’m, like, ‘No way, that’s a real person that makes that, and they’re right around the corner.’ Things like that just bring in a lot of joy,” Dean said.

Weaver explained that she wants shopping at the Locavore “to feel democratic,” and that she sells items in “every price range and category” so that everyone who walks in “can feel like there’s something for them.”

Weaver also wants her store to be the opposite of shops that “make you feel like you’re not allowed to touch anything” and encourages customer curiosity and exploration.

Cleo Le-Tan, who knows a thing or two about running a small biz, is a happy customer. She owns Pillow-Cat Books in the East Village — and she’s in love with the Locavore’s vibe.

“I like that you can just get all this different stuff — it’s kind of a sort of deluxe convenience store. There isn’t really that anywhere,” Le-Tan told The Post.

“My 6-year-old daughter does ballet upstairs, so we always come down after. She always wants to come here — she calls Caroline ‘Coraline,’ like the movie,” the professional bookworm added.

Le-Tan’s daughter Alpha told The Post that she loves the store’s locally made fruit leather from small biz Joray — with “strawberry and cherry” her two current favorite flavors.

For Weaver, these visits — Alpha’s candy runs, or the children who come in for their weekly Eddie’s pickle fix — are exactly why she opened the shop, and why she loves being part of the community.

“I grew up in rural Ohio, and I became a shop owner because of all the memories I made as a kid in little shops like this,” she said.

“That’s why it matters so much to me to create those kinds of experiences for other people’s kids now.”

For Alpha’s birthday last month, Weaver tied up a bouquet of her favorite flavors as a special gift.

“It’s moments like that — being part of these kids’ lives — that really matter to me,” she said with a smile.

With backing from Visa, the reservations platform is staking its claim on in-demand restaurants and paying them handsomely to jump ship from Resy.

In the credit card wars, popular restaurants are being used as cultural currency.Credit...Jon Krause

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By Priya Krishna

During one of the busiest times in New Orleans this year — Super Bowl weekend — Lydia Castro realized that a glitch in Resy had made reservations for her Mexican restaurant, Acamaya, appear unavailable to diners. On what should have been a banner night, tables would be empty.

As if on cue, an OpenTable employee walked into the restaurant with a cooler filled with Gatorade and candy, and wished her luck for the weekend ahead. Not long after, the company reached out with an offer: Switch to OpenTable and set a few prime-time reservations aside for select Visa customers. In exchange, the restaurant would receive a generous one-time payment.

Ms. Castro declined to disclose the amount because she hasn’t decided whether or not she is taking the deal, but it was enough for her to seriously consider a change. “How do they have so much money to give out to people?” she said.

The answer: credit card companies. Last year, OpenTable, home to more than 60,000 restaurant clients, signed a partnership with Visa that gives certain cardholders access to coveted reservation slots at popular restaurants. Six years ago, American Express purchased Resy — used by more than 20,000 restaurants — and added Tock to its portfolio last year. Since 2021, American Express has offered premium cardholders access to in-demand reservations on Resy.

As a result, some of the country’s best-known chefs have been placed squarely in the center of the credit card wars as restaurants become invaluable cultural currency for financial institutions chasing young, wealthy customers.

“They are obviously trying to build a roster of ‘All these are the cool restaurants, we want them with us,’ ” said Ms. Castro.

In interviews and messages, eight restaurateurs across the United States — who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements — said they had been offered cash deals from OpenTable that ranged from $40,000 to $95,000 to make the switch. (That’s a pittance compared with the $187 billion in swipe fees that American businesses pay credit card companies each year, according to the National Restaurant Association.)

This is because diners who frequent high-end restaurants are an especially coveted audience for credit card companies, as they “have more disposable income, higher net worth, higher credit scores,” said Nick Ewen, the senior editorial director at The Points Guy, a travel website that also reviews credit cards. In a report from the market research firm Mintel, dining was the No. 1 planned spending category in 2025 among customers ages 25 to 34.

Ms. Castro may be undecided, but for the restaurateurs that did accept the money, the sentiment was more or less the same: conflicted about becoming pawns in a corporate wrestling match, but thankful for the cash infusion at a time when operating costs have never been higher and margins have never been slimmer.

“It feels kind of weird that restaurants are this hot commodity,” said Fermín Núñez, a chef in Austin, Texas, who moved his three restaurants — Este, Suerte and Bar Toti — to OpenTable six months ago after receiving cash and sponsorship for an anniversary event. “It is a golden era, and I don’t know how long it is going to last, so we might as well ride the wave.”

Debby Soo, the chief executive of OpenTable, said these cash payments are part of a strategy to get “the best and trendiest and hottest, most popular, most awarded” restaurants on OpenTable, a platform that has lagged behind in that particular category for several years.

“The top echelon of restaurants, they are market movers,” Ms. Soo said. If they adopt OpenTable, she said, other restaurants may follow.

Starting in 2020, Ms. Soo kicked off a technological overhaul of OpenTable, adding features like bot detection, credit card holds for bookings and a feature that notifies diners if a reservation becomes available. These changes helped, but a key element in persuading restaurants to switch was Visa — and the money it was able to offer restaurants.

Ms. Soo said the exact sum offered to a restaurant depends on a few factors, including location, demand and the deal it is receiving from its current reservation service.

In response to the poaching, Pablo Rivero, the chief executive of Resy, said, “We will continue to invest in long-term partnerships, because partnerships are more important than a one-time check.” He declined to share specifics, but said Resy had hosted or sponsored 230 restaurant events in 2024 — a record for the company — and pointed to the American Express acquisition of Tock, which brought 7,000 more restaurants under the same umbrella.

It was the acquisition of Tock that made Greg Ryan, an owner of Bell’s, a French bistro in Los Alamos, Calif., nervous that he would be forced to switch from Tock to Resy. He didn’t feel much more excited about OpenTable, which he saw as “antiquated,” he said.

But a year and a half ago, when OpenTable showed him its improved technology and promised a dedicated representative, and he realized that other respected restaurants, like Kato in Los Angeles, had moved to OpenTable, he was impressed.

The cash certainly helped, too.

“We need to find as many opportunities to figure out how to pay our teams more, how to have the resources to deliver a better product, to be able to grow in some way,” Mr. Ryan said. “If someone is willing to help that while also feeling very much like a partner, I am OK with that.”

These payments also come at a time when some restaurants are feeling frustrated with Resy: it glitches frequently, a few owners said, and the company has rested on its cool-kid laurels rather than improve its technology or customer service. In an emailed response, Mr. Rivero said his company’s platform had “released more product updates in 2024 than in any year in Resy’s history,” including protections against reservation fraud and tools for turning tables faster, but he did not address the issue of glitching.

Even so, some restaurateurs still believe that Resy is the best place to find younger, cooler customers.

“There is a certain type of diner that is on Resy that we feel is more our customer base,” said Peter Cho, who runs the Korean American restaurants Han Oak and Jeju in Portland, Ore., and accepted a cash offer from OpenTable last year. “When we switched to OpenTable, we felt a drop-off in the guest count.”

But his restaurants needed the money. Tourism to Portland has declined, he said, and Feast, a major food festival in the city, shut down in 2022. It was one of the reasons he took the deal.

Not everyone has been swayed by the cash offers. Cherif Mbodji, a partner and chief operating officer for the fine-dining restaurants Bludorn, Navy Blue, Bar Bludorn and Perseid in Houston, turned OpenTable down after the company offered “a lot of money” last year, he said.

It was not worth the hassle of transitioning the restaurants’ guest databases to another system, Mr. Mbodji said, and he was happy with the Resy partnership, including its sponsorship support for several of the restaurants’ events each year. But Mr. Mbodji understands why so many owners have taken the deal. “It is hard to say no when your restaurant is fighting to exist.”

OpenTable said nearly 900 restaurants have joined its Visa dining program since it started last year, though not all have received cash incentives. The question for many of restaurateurs is what happens next.

“What if Amex in three years is like, ‘We are going to throw some serious money to get these key restaurants?’ ” said Erin Pommer, the director of brand for Frasca Hospitality Group, which runs six restaurants in Colorado and has moved five of them to OpenTable since receiving a cash offer. Restaurants’ loyalty to OpenTable “is going to be tested in how the relationship is managed after everybody is converted.”

For once, restaurants have some leverage with the reservation companies they have long helped to succeed.

“I feel emboldened,” she said.

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The first statewide transit strike in New Jersey in more than 40 years began just after midnight Friday when about 450 unionized locomotive engineers walked off their jobs in a dispute over pay.

The walkout by members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen shut down New Jersey Transit’s rail network. The strike will leave tens of thousands of commuters scrambling for other ways to reach their jobs in the New York City metropolitan region.

The union said its members will start picketing at 4 a.m. on Friday.

Mark Wallace, the union’s national president, said: “They have money for penthouse views and pet projects, just not for their frontline workers. Enough is enough. We will stay out until our members receive the fair pay that they deserve.”

Kris Kolluri, the chief executive of NJ Transit, said at a news conference late Thursday, that he would return to the bargaining table at any time. “This is not a lost cause,” he said. “This is an eminently achievable deal.”

Gov. Philip D. Murphy said the agency’s offer to the union “would have given their members almost exactly what they asked for.”

About 70,000 commuters ride the agency’s trains to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan on a typical weekday. Many thousands more ride trains to stations in Newark and Hoboken, where they transfer to other trains, buses or ferries.

NJ Transit’s statewide bus system continued to operate as scheduled, and the agency hired private buses to substitute for its train service. But Mr. Kolluri warned that the chartered buses could accommodate only about 20 percent of the displaced train riders. Those chartered buses do not start until next week.

They will run from four Park & Ride lots around the state: Secaucus Junction; PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel; Hamilton Rail Station; and Woodbridge Center Mall.

Commuters who already have NJ Transit rail tickets and passes to or from New York, Newark or Hoboken may use those tickets on the Park & Ride service. They will also be cross-honored on NJ Transit buses and light rail lines, but not on other carriers, including Amtrak, PATH ferries and private carrier buses.

Mr. Kolluri urged rail commuters whose presence in their workplaces was not essential to work from home during the strike. Some big employers in New York, like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, tried to ease the expected jams by giving their workers temporary permission to work remotely or saying they would consider providing some flexibility.

The Partnership for New York City, which represents large employers, estimated that each hour that New Jersey’s commuters were delayed in getting to work would reduce overall productivity in the city by $6 million.

Transportation experts said the impact of the rail shutdown would ripple across other transit systems and add to congestion on the roads in New Jersey. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor runs up the spine of New Jersey, providing an alternative for some commuters, but its trains are more expensive than NJ Transit’s and are often booked up in advance.

“Even with a contingency plan in place, this is going to be incredibly disruptive to the region,” said Zoe Baldwin, vice president for state programs at the Regional Plan Association. “No matter what mode you’re on, you’re going to have a more difficult commute than usual.”

The strike, the first by transit workers in the state since 1983, came after many months of fruitless negotiations and federal interventions. The National Mediation Board called representatives of the two sides to Washington on Monday in an attempt to reduce tensions.

That was the third try in Washington to broker an accord. Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called a Presidential Emergency Board last June to mediate the dispute. That panel recommended contract terms closer to what NJ Transit was offering than what the engineers demanded.

A second Presidential Emergency Board then tried to tackle the matter. In January, it too sided with NJ Transit’s offer as more reasonable than the union’s demands.

Mr. Kolluri took the reins of the agency in January at the behest of Mr. Murphy, New Jersey’s second-term governor, and made settling with the engineers’ union a priority. In March, he shook hands with a union official on an agreement that appeared to resolve the longstanding impasse. But in mid-April, the union’s members overwhelmingly rejected that tentative contract.

The engineers demanded to be paid on par with their counterparts who drive trains for Amtrak and the other commuter railroads in the region — the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad. Mr. Kolluri has refused to agree to such a big increase, saying that it would raise the average annual pay of the engineers to $172,000 from $135,000, and could force the agency to raise fares by 17 percent or more.

Thomas Haas, the general chairman of the engineers’ union, contended that those figures were inflated. He said that his members earned about $10 an hour less than their peers.

The engineers’ union was the only one of the 15 unions representing New Jersey Transit employees that had not negotiated a deal with the agency in recent years.

After the engineers rejected the terms of the tentative agreement in April, Mr. Kolluri returned to the bargaining table with union officials. But he presented the same offer that had just been rejected, angering the engineers.

Mr. Haas said that Mr. Kolluri did not want to work out a deal. Mr. Kolluri, in turn, said he wondered about Mr. Haas’s mental health.

All the while, Mr. Murphy, who had promised to “fix” NJ Transit, was monitoring the proceedings from a distance.

The governor said on Wednesday night that he had been “talking literally constantly” with Mr. Kolluri. Mr. Murphy said the two sides had made “enormous progress,” and he hoped that each would walk away with an agreement that provided “a piece of what they wanted and maybe a piece of, you know, that they didn’t get.”

On Thursday, a spokesman for the engineers’ union said if a deal was not reached, its members would start picketing at 4 a.m. Friday at Penn Station in New York, at NJ Transit’s headquarters in Newark and at the train station in Atlantic City.

A prolonged strike would have repercussions beyond complicating commutes. Many air travelers rely on NJ Transit trains to get to Newark Liberty Airport. The agency also shuttles fans to concerts and sporting events at the Prudential Center in Newark and MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

The agency had already canceled train and bus service to MetLife for Shakira’s concerts on Thursday and Friday nights. Beyoncé fans were already worrying about how they would get to her five shows at MetLife over the next two weeks.

Uber warned customers that it expected “significantly higher demand for Uber rides across New Jersey, especially during large-scale events that will take place at MetLife Stadium” and that they should prepare for longer wait times and higher prices than usual.

Matthew Haag contributed reporting.

The last remaining New York City property owned by the estate of celebrated pop artist Roy Lichtenstein has found a buyer, The Post has learned.

Located at 739 Washington Street in Manhattan’s West Village, the redbrick Greek Revival townhouse sold this week for $6.525 million, marking the latest step in the methodical dissolution of the artist’s once-expansive real estate footprint.

Tucked away on a quiet block steps from the Hudson River, the three-story home built in 1845 spans nearly 3,700 square feet and retains many of its 19th-century details, including pumpkin pine floors, six fireplaces and intricate molding.

Despite being used as an office for the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation in recent years, the home’s layout and period charm offered strong appeal to buyers drawn to historic authenticity in a neighborhood increasingly dotted with modern conversions.

It was initially listed for $6.9 million in November before entering into contract just a few short months later, at the start of 2025.

Clayton Orrigo, also of Compass, represented the unidentified buyer.

The building sits directly adjacent to Lichtenstein’s longtime home and studio, a former metalworking shop at 741/745 Washington Street, donated in 2022 by his widow, Dorothy Lichtenstein, to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

According to Lee Ann Jaffee of Compass, who co-listed the property with colleague Steven Sumser, “It was a guest house. I shouldn’t say he never lived there. I do not know of him ever living there. It was always represented to me that it was a guest house.”

Just a few feet south lies 747 Washington Street, a garage that once housed the artist’s personal art and wine collection.

The Post previously reported that the property sold earlier this year for $5.5 million to an anonymous buyer operating under the LLC “WHAAM-NOMAD”— a not-so-subtle nod to Lichtenstein’s iconic 1963 painting “Whaam!”

The sale of 739 Washington concludes a physical chapter in the Lichtenstein estate’s multi-year effort to downsize and distribute the artist’s holdings following Dorothy’s death last July. She had spent decades preserving and stewarding her husband’s legacy through exhibitions, donations and the meticulous cataloguing of his oeuvre through the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.

That work has culminated in a broader unwinding.

The foundation has announced it will cease operations by 2026, having fulfilled its mission of publishing Lichtenstein’s catalogue raisonné and distributing thousands of works and archival materials to institutions around the world.

Among the most prominent recipients, the Whitney now occupies Lichtenstein’s former Manhattan studio as the permanent home of its Independent Study Program.

The building — originally constructed in 1912 — was where Lichtenstein lived, painted, and entertained visitors during his later years.

“He worked downstairs, ate lunch at the same diner every day, and lived upstairs in a one-bedroom with Dorothy,” according to Curbed. The space is currently being renovated by Johnston Marklee, the architecture firm behind major museum projects in Houston and Chicago.

Just next door, the garage at 747 Washington has a more utilitarian design, but it proved equally valuable.

In addition to room for four cars, it includes a steel-and-wood staircase leading to a private office, a landscaped roof deck and skyline views.

Beyond Manhattan, the artist’s coastal sanctuary is also on the market.

In September, the couple’s longtime home, once a carriage house on Southampton’s prestigious Gin Lane, was listed for $19.99 million, The Post reported.

The 2-acre property, where Roy worked in a separate studio across the lawn and Dorothy ultimately passed away last summer, had never before been for sale in the 54 years since the Lichtensteins purchased it.

“It’s going to make a really nice home for somebody because it’s unique,” Harald Grant of Sotheby’s International Realty, one of the co-listing agents, told The Post.

While the real estate assets are being dispersed, the centerpiece of the estate’s final chapter is unfolding this evening and Friday night at Sotheby’s New York.

More than 40 works from the private collection of Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein are headed to the auction block as part of the house’s marquee Contemporary Evening and Day Sales.

Estimated to exceed $35 million in total, the works chart four decades of the artist’s output—from early drawings to large-scale paintings, sculptures, and prints.

“From drawings to paintings to sculpture, this phenomenal group of works provides a front row seat to Lichtenstein’s incomparable genius,” David Galperin, Sotheby’s Vice Chairman and Head of Contemporary Art in New York, said in a statement.

“Together, the group is a survey of the artist’s reflections of art history over four decades of practice.”

Among the highlights is Reflections: Art (1988), estimated to fetch between $4 million and $6 million. The acrylic-on-canvas piece belongs to Lichtenstein’s celebrated “Reflections” series, where he obscured iconic images with simulated glass glares — both a play on illusion and a metaphor for art’s relationship to perception.

“To my father, art was all about composition,” said Mitchell Lichtenstein, the artist’s son, in a statement. “When asked for comment about his subject matter, he often said, ‘It’s just marks on a page.’”

Other marquee offerings include Woman: Sunlight, Moonlight (1996), a double-sided sculpture in painted wood — a study for a bronze edition later acquired by institutions like The Broad in Los Angeles — and Stretcher Frame with Cross Bars III (1968), one of only eleven such works exploring the backside of a painting.

“The amusing aspect of the Stretcher Frame painting is that of the two sides of a canvas, it depicts the side we least want to see,” said Mitchell.

Sculptures such as Mirror I (1976) echo the artist’s lifelong fascination with the idea of reflection and illusion, while collage studies like Interior with African Mask (Study) (1990) reveal his painstaking process in constructing his “Interiors” series, which poked fun at the aspirational settings common in shelter magazines.

“One amusing thing to consider about the Interior series is that the generic furniture ad aesthetic of the rooms depicted in them is likely to be antithetical to the taste of the collector and to the room in which they hang the work,” Mitchell noted.

Other featured works include Haystacks (1968), Lichtenstein’s tongue-in-cheek nod to Monet’s Impressionist series, reinterpreted with bold Ben-Day dots; Entablature (1975), incorporating sand from the Southampton beaches near his studio; and Cover Image (The Gun in America) for Time Magazine (Study) (circa 1968), a graphite-on-paper rendering originally commissioned in response to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

“Lichtenstein was keenly aware of his place in the lineage of art history,” said Lucius Elliott, Head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auctions in New York. “The crux of his practice is this interrogation of the nature of art and image making.”

Born in New York City in 1923, Roy’s early artistic ambitions took shape at Ohio State University, where he studied after World War II.

He rose to fame in the 1960s for his stylized comic book paintings — and went on to produce over 5,000 works spanning media, genres, and decades. Despite early critical controversy, his pieces are now held by museums including MoMA, the Whitney, the Centre Pompidou, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

His widow, Dorothy, was instrumental in cementing that legacy. A Brooklyn native and former gallery director, she co-founded the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and was its longtime president, overseeing major donations of more than 1,000 works to institutions worldwide.