Andy Warhol windfall for museums

By Kristina Tedeschi
Staff Writer

Published on November 23, 2007

Three area art museums will each receive nearly 150 original works by American artist Andy Warhol in what a foundation is calling "an unprecedented gift."

The University Gallery at the University of Massachusetts, the Smith College Museum of Art and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum are among 183 college and university art museums across the country to receive a collection of Polaroid photographs and gelatin silver prints.

The gifts will be given through the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Photographic Legacy Program, in honor of its 20th anniversary.

"It's really very gratifying," said Marianne Doezema, director of the Mount Holyoke museum, in South Hadley. "It's really going to enhance public access to Warhol's photographs."

Warhol, who died in 1987 at age 58, was a central figure in the pop art movement in the 1960s, and worked in a variety of media, including sculpture, film, painting, photography and literature.

His works have fetched millions since his death. In May, Warhol's painting "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)" sold for $71.7 million at Christie's, which more than quadrupled the previous top auction price of $17.4 million, set when his "Mao" sold in November 2006.

Although the exact date of their arrival is not yet known, the works are expected by January, according to Loretta Yarlow, director of the University Gallery at UMass in Amherst.

Museum directors say they don't know which works they will receive and haven't made decisions on how or when the work will be displayed.

"I think we're going to have to see what it is we get," said Aprile Gallant, curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton. "I'm assuming they'll be gearing it to what we already own."

Each college already has a modest collection of Warhol works, directors said. The 28,543 original works included in the total gift are valued at more than $28 million, which breaks down to about $153,000-worth of Warhol photography for each school. Each piece must be inventoried before it can go on view, the directors said.

The foundation's Photographic Legacy Program aims to give institutions that don't have the means to acquire Warhol works the opportunity to add a significant number of photographs to their permanent collections. For others, it means increasing their holdings, according to the organization.

"A wealth of information about Warhol's process and his interactions with his sitters is revealed in these images," said Jenny Moore, a curator for the foundation, in a statement. "Through his rigorous - though almost unconscious - consistency in shooting, the true idiosyncrasies of his subjects were revealed."

At UMass, Yarlow says the art history department and graduate students studying art will have a hand in organizing the pieces and adding them to the gallery's database. At Smith and Mount Holyoke, Gallant and Doezema said the Warhol works will allow students to study the artist in depth. "It was a wonderful opportunity to have this as part of our collection's legacy," Yarlow said. "It just fits in perfectly with the whole notion of expanding public viewing of our permanent collections."

The University Gallery is soon dedicating its North Gallery to a rotating exhibition of items taken from its permanent collection, which contains thousands of works on paper.

Though much of Warhol's work is iconographic, particularly his Campbell's tomato soup can and his vivid renderings of celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, the artist's photography is not as well-known.

"His use of photography is a very important part of his work, and one that's not studied as much, I think," Gallant said. In her six years at the museum, Gallant said she's never seen such a large gift from a single organization.

"They're certainly rare, and they're very welcome, particularly when it's an artist that would be very interesting for students to study in depth," she said.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was established in 1987 in accordance with the artist's will.

When Warhol died, he left a vast inventory of works and personal possessions. His will dictated that his entire estate, with the exception of a few small legacies to family members, go to create a foundation dedicated to the "'advancement of the visual arts,'" the foundation's Web site states.

Since its inception, the foundation has awarded more than $200 million in cash grants and art donations.