The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) plays an essential role in maintaining the health of the retina. The RPE is also the site of pathologic processes in a wide variety of retinal disorders including monogenic retinal dystrophies, age-related macular degeneration, and retinal detachment. Despite intense interest in the RPE, little is known about its molecular response to ocular damage or disease. We have conducted a comprehensive analysis of changes in transcript abundance (the “genomic response”) in the murine RPE after light damage. Several dozen transcripts, many related to cell–cell signaling, show significant increases in abundance in response to bright light; transcripts encoding visual cycle proteins show a decrease in abundance. Similar changes are induced by retinal detachment. Environmental and genetic perturbations that modulate the RPE response to bright light suggest that this response is controlled by the retina. In contrast to the response to bright light, the RPE response to retinal detachment overrides these modulatory affects.