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Urban Interview
By Jordan Weeks
The ever-increasing
number of participatory arts programs and activities such as the Pittsburgh Hip-Hop Forum held last
year, and the Sun Ra tribute
evening, is raising The Warhol's
temperature as "More than a Museum." The busy education
department demonstrates this with its issue of Urban Interview, the annual magazine produced in print and
online by inner city high school and eighth-grade students in an
after-school apprentice program at the museum. This year’s Urban Interview team includes
students Jaren Brown, Adam William Carnes, Andrea Jordan, Chris Kenney,
Camille Manison, and Michael Mason.
The latest issue is hot off
the presses. You can see it online
and also get a copy at the museum.
Based on Andy
Warhol's barometer of
socio-cultural-arts interests in his own Interview magazine, which was famous for its interviews with
and profiles of up-and-coming visual artists, musicians, writers, or
actors, Urban Interview allows
Pittsburgh students to interview people from a wide range of professions,
and showcases the students’ own
poetry and visual art. The students assemble the whole magazine, from
conducting, transcribing, and writing the interviews, to editing,
establishing the layout, and designing and applying graphics. As artist apprentices, they are employed
for this project by the museum.
At the Warhol
they are taught how to research their interviewees, write questions, and
conduct the interviews. They are
also taught basic computer literacy skills, along with digital imaging, web
building, and desktop publishing.
The software is Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Pagemaker, and Dreamweaver.
The Artist
Apprentices choose people they want to interview. One is the "star" interview, usually a local
celebrity such as a Pittsburgh Steeler or a well-known DJ, and the other is
a community interview. This last can be someone from the student's own
neighborhood or a community organization they know about and think other
teens would be interested in. Or it
could be someone from a profession the student is interested in as a
possible career. The 2001 issue
(Issue 6) has interviews with local gospel singer Deborah Hollis, skater
Christopher Shields, local graffiti artist Cream, author Omar Tyree, a
victim of multiple gang shootings, and a naval officer.
Tresa Varner, assistant
curator of education at The Warhol, says computer skills are a large focus
of the program, since they are now of paramount importance in the world job
market. At The Warhol students have more time to become familiar with the
applications of different programs than they might have in a school-based
computer lab or library. Varner observes that the students “don’t
necessarily have access to the latest computer technology. We’re trying to
bridge that gap between people who have a home computer and people who have
access to one only at a library, and who get kicked-off after fifteen
minutes.”
Urban Interview helps students learn
skills society puts a high value on, and when they succeed in learning
these skills, they gain increased confidence in their abilities and in
their plans for the future.
Pop Goes the World
Pop CultureS events
Through September 2, 2001
By sharing the
experiences and perspectives of others we begin to understand ourselves--a
truth that is evident in Popular CultureS/Michael
Parekowhai/Ravinder Reddy/Yinka Shonibare.
This three-part exploration of world cultures can be experienced
in the work of three contemporary artists: Maori/New Zealand artist
Parekowhai, Indian artist Reddy, and Nigerian/English artist
Shonibare. Each artist explores the
popular culture of his homeland.
In Warholian
fashion, The Andy Warhol Museum presents a cornucopia of multi-media events
related to Popular CultureS.
Following the exhibition opening event on Saturday, June 9, there were
featured appearances by artists Reddy and Parekowhai, and performances on
the latter’s playable exhibit Ten
Guitars.
Every Saturday
during the exhibition's run The Warhol presents local musicians performing
on the exhibit’s playable guitars, which are crafted in the 1960’s Western
pop style that inspired their creation: July 7, 14, 21, and 28, August 4,
11, 18, and 25, and September 1.
Good Fridays,
The Warhol’s hopping, free-admission Friday evening series which frequently
accents exhibitions with a variety of programs, is rife throughout July and
August with Pop CultureS-related
events. Events range from the free screenings of martial arts movies Holy Weapon and Wing Chun (August 24)
and Sauraj R. Banjatya's United We
Stand (July 20), to an evening of live Mehandi Painting and Batik art
(July 6). There's also a lecture by
Popular CultureS artist Yinka
Shonibare (July 27), and Afro-Pop!
(August 31), a music/dance/food happening in and around The Warhol
celebrating Nigeria’s worldwide musical influence and Pan-African
culture. You won’t know which way
is up—and you won’t care!
Financial support has been provided by the E.
Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts,
a state agency, and The Rockefeller Foundation. Michael Parekowhai's presentation has been made possible with
assistance from Creative New Zealand.
Yinka Shonibare’s presentation has been made possible with
assistance from the British Council and Joe's Basement.
The 2001 exhibition program has been supported
in part by The Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, Inc.
Where in the World is Warhol?
…in Moscow & Eastern
Europe
Whether it is
greeting visitors at the top of an escalator at the Musee Nationale d’Arte
Moderne-Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, or helping a fourth-grade teacher
in Vail, Arizona talk to her class about the importance of creative
thinking and problem-solving, the work of Andy Warhol has worldwide
influence. Only in recent years, however, have large audiences in countries
outside of the U.S. had the chance to see many of these influential pieces
up-close. Thanks to the world-touring exhibitions organized by The Andy
Warhol Museum and its various organizational and sponsorship partners over
the past five years, more than 2.3 million people are finally getting to
see these pieces in person.
Organized in
partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and
Cultural Affairs, Andy Warhol,
the comprehensive retrospective exhibit of the Pop king’s work, began its
international touring life in January 2000 and continues through spring,
2002. From the end of May through
the beginning of July, the exhibition is at the Pushkin State Museum of
Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia, before moving on to venues in Turkey, Croatia,
Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.
Other touring
shows organized by The Warhol and its partners have been responsible for
record-breaking attendance at museums in places such as Perth, Australia,
and Marseilles, France. “We are proud to present this great American genius
to the people who previously may only have had access to his art through
reproduction,” asserts Warhol Museum director Thomas Sokolowski of the Andy Warhol exhibit. Juliet Lea H. Simonds, Board chair for
The Warhol, says, “The Board of The Andy Warhol Museum is pleased to see the Museum presenting
programs furthering its mission as a vital center in Pittsburgh while
extending its expertise abroad.”
Chamber Music at The
Warhol
Over the past
five years, The Andy Warhol Museum has hosted numerous performances by the
Pittsburgh Chamber Music Project (PCMP), and this year’s offering promises
to be even more exciting, with an expanded program that now includes four
performances. The director of PCMP,
Richard Page, who is principal bass clarinetist for the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra, invites everyone to “join us for four evenings of extraordinary
music-making in a setting unlike any other in the city.”
Tuesday,
October 16 The series opens with
chamber ensemble performances of Leos [LITTLE “U”-SHAPED ACCENT OVER THE
“s”] Janacek’s [UPWARD-SLANTING ACCENT OVER THE SECOND “a” IN “Janacek”] Mladi, Oliver Messiaen’s influential
epic Quartet for the End of Time,
and Darius Milhaud’s L’ Printemps,
Opus 18.
Tuesday,
December 4 Performances of Johannes Brahms’s Trio in A Major, Opus
114 , Beethoven’s Septet, Opus
20, and Bohuslav Martinu’s Adante.
Tuesday,
February 5, 2002 This is the Wind
Octet Program, with music from
Mozart, Beethoven, and Went.
Tuesday, April
2, 2002 A program coinciding with
the PSO’s “week of new music,” featuring soprano Mimi Lerner, and works by
contemporary composer Oliver Knussen, who will makes a special in-person
appearance.
At the beginning
of each evening’s performance, Warhol Museum director Thomas Sokolowski
will offer observations about the visual arts that, as Page notes, “may
have shared time, space, or inspiration with the music.”
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