The Andy Warhol Museum facts for kids
The Andy Warhol Museum in 2020
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| Established | May 13, 1994 |
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| Location | 117 Sandusky Street Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA |
| Type | Art museum |
| Visitors | 106,396 (2010) |
| Official name: Andy Warhol Museum (Volkwein's, Frick & Lindsay Building) | |
| Designated: | 2000 |
The Andy Warhol Museum is a special place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the biggest museum in North America that focuses on just one artist. This museum holds a huge collection of art and important papers from Andy Warhol. He was a famous pop art artist born in Pittsburgh.
The Andy Warhol Museum is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. It was created with help from the Carnegie Institute, the Dia Art Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (AWFVA).
The museum building is very large, about 88,000 square feet. It has seven floors with 17 different art galleries. Inside, you can see 900 paintings and nearly 2,000 works on paper. There are also over 1,000 unique prints and 77 sculptures. The museum has 4,000 photographs and more than 4,350 films and videos by Warhol. Since 1996, the museum has also sent 56 traveling exhibits around the world. These shows have been seen by almost nine million people.
Contents
Museum History and Growth
How the Museum Started
Plans for the museum were first announced in October 1989. This was about two and a half years after Andy Warhol passed away. When the museum was announced, the AWFVA and the Dia Art Foundation gave it many artworks. These artworks were worth about $80 million.
Thomas N. Armstrong III became the museum's first director in 1993. He used to be the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Before the museum opened, Matt Wrbican joined the team. He helped organize all of Warhol's belongings in New York. Matt later became the museum's archivist and a top expert on Warhol's art.
Building and Early Days
By 1993, the museum building, which was an old industrial warehouse, was ready. The renovations cost about $12 million. The AWFVA had given more than 1,000 of Warhol's artworks. These were worth over $55 million. This donation later grew to about 3,000 artworks.
The museum opened its doors on May 13–14, 1994. About 25,000 visitors came to see it during the opening weekend. Thomas Armstrong, the first director, left his job nine months after the opening.
Warhol's Films and Videos
On November 1, 1997, the AWFVA gave all the copyrights for Warhol's films and videos to the museum. This means the museum now owns the rights to these important works.
Plans for a New York Location
In 2013, there were plans to open another part of the museum in Manhattan, New York City. This new location was going to be in a development called Essex Crossing. It was planned to open by 2017. However, in March 2015, the museum announced that it would not open the New York location.
New Discoveries and Future Plans
In October 2019, an audio tape of music by Lou Reed was found at the museum. This music was based on Warhol's 1975 book, "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again". No one knew about this music before.
In 2022, the museum shared plans for a big expansion called 'The Pop District'. This project will cover six blocks in Pittsburgh. The expansion aims to build a music venue and a social media studio called Warhol Creative. It will also create more spaces for public art. The new area will be about 58,000 square feet. It will include a concert venue for up to 1,000 people. There will also be an events space for up to 360 people. This project is expected to take ten years to complete. It is mainly funded by local foundations.
See also
In Spanish: Museo Andy Warhol para niños
- List of single-artist museums
- Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, Medzilaborce, Slovakia
