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).
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.
, 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 80,000-square-foot 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.
In May 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.
See also
