Robert Indiana never saw his oversized EAT sign illuminated after it went up at the New York World's Fair in 1964. A day after being turned on, the sign with its hundreds of light bulbs was turned off because it was attracting hungry tourists who thought it was a restaurant, not a piece of art.

The EAT sign goes back on public display this month for the first time in 44 years as part of Indiana's first major U.S. exhibition in a decade, at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. The sign is being installed atop the museum roof with lights flashing on five large metal discs with the letters E, A and T.

Having EAT rise again after all these years brings back memories of his mother, who at one time ran a diner and whose final dying word was ''eat,'' Indiana says.

''When the sign is finally turned on the roof of the Farnsworth, and I see it for the first time, that will be one of my most exciting days in Maine and one of the most exciting days of my life,'' he says at his studio on Vinalhaven, an island 15 miles off the Maine coast where he has lived since 1978.

Indiana, who is 80, was part of the pop-art movement of the 1960s, known for his recurring use of numbers and words and bright, flat colors that seem to jump off his paintings and sculptures. He cringes at the term pop artist, preferring to call himself a ``hard-edged artist.''

The Robert Indiana and The Star of Hope exhibition, which runs through Oct. 25, will feature about 80 of Indiana's pieces spanning his career. Almost all the work comes from his Star of Hope studio, and many of the pieces have never been publicly displayed before.

The EAT sign -- five 300-pound discs, each 6 feet in diameter -- is being showcased almost 50 feet above ground level on top of the museum, where it will flash, flicker and blink from morning until late at night. The original light bulbs have been replaced with modern light-emitting diode bulbs. The museum had a special base built so the sign can withstand winds of up to 100 mph.

Inside the museum, Indiana's works will fill five of the 12 galleries. They include his LOVE sculptures and prints, along with his Marsden Hartley Elegy series and his new HOPE sculpture, which he created for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and premiered at last summer's Democratic National Convention.

His Eighth American Dream oil on canvas -- measuring more than 14 feet square -- hangs in the museum lobby, where a new wall had to be built so there'd be a place big enough for it to be displayed. The museum gardens will have several outdoor sculptures, including his 12 foot-by-12 foot LOVE wall and his 8-foot-high Art sculpture.

Indiana has lived on Vinalhaven for 31 years. His work in Maine is a continuation of what he started in New York in the 1960s when he and such artists as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were making names for themselves.

LOVE, two letters to a line with the ''O'' tilted sideways, is Indiana's best-known work, instantly recognizable worldwide. There are hundreds of his LOVE sculptures around the world, some of which have sold for as much as $3.5 million, he says.

Indiana lives in a 19th century, four-story building located on the main drag of Vinalhaven, a community of about 1,300 year-round residents. His house was once an Oddfellows Lodge, with sprawling, dark rooms and wide, steep staircases. After 9/11, Indiana painted American flag images on the exterior walls.

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