Andy Warhol Museum

The Andy Warhol Museum is the largest museum in North America dedicated to a single artist. Located on the North Shore of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the museum holds the world's most comprehensive collection of art and archives by Andy Warhol, the Pittsburgh-born pop art icon. Opened in 1994, it is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and operates as a collaborative project of the Carnegie Institute, the Dia Art Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Plans for the museum were announced in October 1989, approximately two and a half years after Warhol's death. At that time, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Dia Art Foundation donated works valued at an estimated $80 million to the new institution. Thomas N. Armstrong III, former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1974 to 1990, was appointed the museum's first director in 1993. Matt Wrbican joined the staff before opening, inventorying Warhol's belongings in New York, and became the museum's archivist and a leading expert on Warhol's work.

By 1993, renovation of the industrial warehouse had cost approximately $12 million, and the AWFVA had donated more than 1,000 works valued at over $55 million, a figure that eventually grew to about 3,000 works. The museum opened on May 13, 1994, with a 24-hour celebration; its opening weekend drew approximately 25,000 visitors. Armstrong resigned nine months after opening amid reported tense relations with the AWFVA and the Carnegie Institute, though the precise role of this friction in his departure remained unclear. On November 1, 1997, the AWFVA donated all Warhol film and video copyrights to the museum.

In October 2019, an audio tape of previously unknown music by Lou Reed based on Warhol's 1975 book "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again" was discovered in the museum's archives. In 2022, the museum announced a $60 million expansion called the Pop District, spanning six blocks in Pittsburgh with plans for a music venue, a social media studio named Warhol Creative, and expanded public art exhibition spaces. The 58,000-square-foot project, including a 1,000-person concert venue, is expected to take ten years and is funded primarily through local foundations. A planned New York annex in the Essex Crossing development on Manhattan's Lower East Side, announced in 2013 for a 2017 opening, was abandoned in March 2015.

The museum's collection spans the full breadth of Warhol's career, from his early student works through his pop art paintings and later collaborations. It encompasses paintings, drawings, commercial illustrations, sculptures, prints, photographs, wallpaper, sketchbooks, and books. The collection includes iconic 1960s pop art paintings depicting consumer goods such as Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola, as well as celebrity portraits of Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley. Other significant series include 1960s "Death and Disaster" works, "Mao" paintings, abstract oxidation pieces, and 1980s works such as "The Last Supper." The museum also holds collaborative paintings with younger artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente, and drawings by Warhol's mother Julia Warhola.

The film and video holdings comprise more than 4,000 works, including early minimalist films such as "Sleep" and "Blow Job," the epic "The Chelsea Girls," the Screen Tests, and the complete video collection of over 2,500 videotapes. This includes all episodes and outtakes from Warhol's television series "Fashion," "Andy Warhol's T.V.," and "Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes," as well as the soap operas "Vivian's Girls," "Phoney," and "Fight," and the extensive Factory Diaries.

The archive, which Warhol himself considered part of his life's work, contains approximately half a million objects. These include scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, art supplies, source material, exhibition and film posters, approximately 4,000 audio tapes of conversations between Warhol and his associates, thousands of documentary photographs, a nearly complete run of Interview magazine, his extensive library, hundreds of decorative art objects, and personal items including correspondence, diaries, clothing, wigs, and cosmetics. The centerpiece of the archive is Warhol's largest serial artwork, the Time Capsules.

Among the museum's signature works are the 1960s pop art paintings that established Warhol's reputation, including his Campbell's Soup Cans and Coca-Cola images. The celebrity portraits constitute a major strength, with representations of Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley. The "Death and Disaster" series, the "Mao" series, and abstract oxidation paintings from the 1960s are also notable holdings.

The film collection stands out for its depth, ranging from the early minimalist masterworks "Sleep" and "Blow Job" through the later epic "The Chelsea Girls" to the Screen Tests. The complete video collection, with over 2,500 videotapes, preserves Warhol's television experiments and the Factory Diaries.

The archive's Time Capsules represent Warhol's largest serial artwork and form the heart of the collection. The 2019 discovery of the Lou Reed audio tape, based on Warhol's 1975 book, demonstrated the archive's continuing capacity to yield significant finds.

The museum occupies an 88,000-square-foot (8,200 m2) facility on seven floors. The building was originally constructed in 1911 as a distribution center for mill and mine products. Architect Richard Gluckman led the renovation of the industrial warehouse, which cost approximately $12 million by 1993. The facility contains 17 galleries, with a basement level housing the educational studio known as The Factory and conservation workshops.

The Andy Warhol Museum is located on the North Shore of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and operates as a collaborative project of the Carnegie Institute, the Dia Art Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The museum's 2010 operating budget was $6.1 million. That year, attendance reached 106,396 visitors, up from 103,298 in 2009.

Since 1996, the museum has sponsored 56 traveling exhibitions that have visited 153 venues worldwide and attracted close to nine million visitors. The museum has drawn numerous notable visitors including Mick Jagger, Bono, Michelle Obama, Robert Downey Jr., Rupert Everett, Brooke Shields, Nelly Furtado, Willem Dafoe, Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs, Laura Linney, Eddie Izzard, Carla Bruni, and Prince Andrew. The museum has also appeared in popular culture, notably as a filming location for the 2010 film "She's Out of My League," and museum staff served as narrators in the 2022 documentary series "The Andy Warhol Diaries."