The Warhol Museum
Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives. It is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. The Andy Warhol Museum is a vital forum in which diverse audiences of artists, scholars, and the general public are galvanized through creative interaction with the art and life of Andy Warhol. The Warhol is ever-changing, constantly redefining itself in relationship to contemporary life using its unique collections and dynamic interactive programming as tools. The collection includes 900 paintings; approximately 100 sculptures; nearly 2,000 works on paper; more than 1,000 published and unique prints; and 4,000 photographs. The film & video collection includes 60 feature films, 200 of Warhol’s Screen Tests and more than 4,000 videos. Exhibition prints of all Warhol films and videos are added to the collection as they are preserved. The collection also features wallpaper and books by Warhol, covering the entire range of his work from all periods, and includes student work from the 1940s, 1950s drawings, commercial illustrations and sketchbooks; 1960s Pop paintings of consumer products (Campbell’s Soup Cans), celebrities (Liz, Jackie, Marilyn, Elvis), Disasters and Electric Chairs; portrait paintings (Mao), Skull paintings and the abstract Oxidations from the 1970s; and works from the 1980s such as The Last Supper, Raphael I-6.99 and collaborative paintings made with younger artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente. Drawings by Warhol’s mother Julia Warhola are also included in the collection. The collections are the founding contributions of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., Dia Center for the Arts, museum purchases and private donations. The Warhol regularly organizes and tours traveling exhibitions of its collections to venues across the United States and around the world. To date, more than 8 million people have visited the traveling exhibitions. The archives include Warhol’s working materials and source materials (such as photographs, newspapers and magazines); his personal collection of thousands of collectibles and ephemera; 608 Time Capsules (dated collections of material from the artist’s daily life); the full run of Interview magazine; approximately 4,000 audiotapes; and scripts, diaries, and correspondence. These materials are available to the public and scholars in the Archives Study Center by appointment. Film screenings, live music, performance, lectures, symposia and workshops are offered on a regular basis. The Andy Warhol Museum is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, and a collaborative project between the Carnegie Institute, the Dia Art Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Plans to house The Warhol in Pittsburgh, Warhol’s birthplace, were announced in 1989, and the museum opened its doors in May 1994. Originally built in 1911 as a distribution center for products sold to mills and mines, The Warhol was designed by architect Richard Gluckman and features seven floors of gallery and exhibition space. Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1895, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is a collection of four distinctive museums dedicated to exploration through art and science: Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Science Center, and The Warhol. For more information visit Warhol.org