The Andy Warhol Museum

The Andy Warhol Museum.

Established	May 13, 1994
Location	117 Sandusky Street Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Type	Art museum
Visitors	106,396 (2010)
Director	Eric Shiner (Interim)
Curator	Eric Shiner
Website	www.warhol.org

The Andy Warhol Museum, located on the North Shore of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist. It holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives from the Pittsburgh-born pop art icon Andy Warhol.

The Andy Warhol Museum is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and is a collaborative project of the Carnegie Institute, the Dia Art Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (AWFVA).

The museum's main entrance is located on seventh street

The museum is located in an 88,000-square-foot (8,200 m²) facility on seven floors. Containing 17 galleries, the museum features 900 paintings, close to 2,000 works on paper, over 1,000 published unique prints, 77 sculptures, 4,000 photographs, and over 4,350 Warhol films and videotaped works. Its most recent operating budget (2010) was $6.1 million. In addition to its Pittsburgh location the museum has sponsored 56 traveling exhibits that have attracted close to 9 million visitors in 153 venues worldwide since 1996. [1]

History

Plans for the museum were announced in October 1989, about 2½ years after Warhol's death. At the time of the announcement, works worth an estimated $80 million were donated to the newly-announced museum by the AWFVA and the Dia Foundation. Thomas N. Armstrong III, who had been the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1974 to 1990, was named the museum's first director in 1993.

By 1993, the 88,000-square-foot (8,200 m²) industrial warehouse and its extensive renovations had cost about $12 million, and the AWFVA had donated more than 1000 of Warhol's works worth over $55 million, a donation that grew to about 3000 works.

On May 13-14, 1994, the museum attracted about 25,000 visitors to its opening weekend. Armstrong, its founding director, resigned nine months after its opening; at the time of his resignation, the museum had had "tense relations" with the AWFVA and the Carnegie Institute, its financial backer, though The New York Times could find no one involved who would say whether that friction played a role in Armstrong's resignation.

Visitors

The museum has steadily grown as a destination, in 2009 it attracted 103,298 and for 2010 106,396. Many celebrities come to Pittsburgh to visit Andy Warhol's works. Mick Jagger, Bono, first lady Michelle Obama, Robert Downey Jr., Rupert Everett, Brooke Shields, Nelly Furtado, Willem Dafoe, Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs, Laura Linney, Eddie Izzard, France's first lady Carla Bruni and Prince Andrew, Duke of York are just a few who have made a special trip to view the gallery.[2]

Fictional Portrayals

Display of Interview magazine covers

The 2010 film She's Out of My League filmed a key scene at the museum during an evening event. The film's subject was hosting the event.

External links

• Official Museum website
• The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (AWFVA) website