“It is such a fabulous resource—The Warhol archives add so much color and life to exhibitions.”
Jean Wainwright, U.K. Art Critic and Curator
The most comprehensive single-artist museum on the planet, The Andy Warhol Museum is the keeper of the legacy of Andy Warhol, actively preserving priceless creations, sharing them with the world through regularly reimagined exhibitions, and putting Pittsburgh firmly in the global conversation about the power of art. No one knows this better than internationally recognized Warhol expert JEAN WAINWRIGHT. As an art professor, historian, critic, and curator, she’s been conducting research in the archives at The Warhol since the late 1990s.
For her latest show, a grand exhibition at Great Britain’s Newlands House Gallery titled Andy Warhol: My True Story, Jean worked closely with Matt Gray, director of archives at The Warhol, to borrow essential works and gather research material.
As a Brit, Jean became fascinated by Andy Warhol because of the Young British Artists who were influenced by Warhol’s work. She’s also an expert in the study of an artist’s voice, and no contemporary artist recorded their own voice as much as Andy Warhol. Thousands of hours of recordings are only part of the 500,000+ objects and rarely seen artworks in The Warhol’s archives, a place where Jean herself has amassed countless hours over the last few decades. “The archives are like the engine room, the underbelly of what we normally see,” Jean explains. “It is such a fabulous resource — The Warhol archives add so much color and life to exhibitions. The Warhol staff are so generous with their time and lending the works.”
For Andy Warhol: My True Story, Jean wanted to create something that began and ended with Warhol’s family — that is to say, that began and ended with his hometown of Pittsburgh. On display across 11 rooms in the gallery (which was itself a former home) were many pieces from Warhol’s oeuvre that hadn’t been seen before, including drawings, photographs from Warhol’s Factory years, recordings of his family talking about Andy, and paintings from artists who made work in direct response to Warhol.
Jean says, “I’ve been talking about Warhol for so long now, and what I passionately want is to share that there’s not just one story about Warhol, there’s a Warhol for everybody. Andy Warhol is routinely called the most important artist of the 20th century. Everybody can take from his work, and that’s what I’m trying to show. Warhol’s story continues in the archives, in particular in all the recordings that I listened to and the objects I saw there.”
