Photo: Joshua Franzos

When The Andy Warhol Museum first opened its doors 20 years ago, it was a fabulous curiosity. At the opening celebration, alumni of Andy’s Velvet Underground mingled with Pittsburgh business leaders and government bigwigs. It was a strange but wonderful mix of realities, not unlike Andy’s own life.

I remember it well. I was one of the kids waiting in line half the night to take my turn in Warhol’s world. I got into the museum at around 2 a.m. and was blown away. For a young gay man from New Castle, Pa., walking through a museum dedicated to this quirky, amazing, gay artist from Pittsburgh who made it big in New York City, the whole thing was all so monumental. Twenty years later, on May 17, 2014, I attended The Warhol’s 20th anniversary party not as a visitor but as its director. Who would have guessed it?!

The thing is, I was far from the only one inspired by The Andy Warhol Museum 20 years ago, and all the years since. Thanks to the size and scope of the museum’s vast collections, over the past two decades the museum has shared so many different glimpses of Andy Warhol the artist, the businessman, the Pop icon—becoming one of Pittsburgh’s most prominent tourist must-sees. Regionally, the museum’s also come to be known as much for its bold, only-at-The- Warhol programming as its celebrity paintings. Globally, more than 10 million people have viewed Warhol’s art through the museum’s traveling exhibitions, many of them collaborations with other museums, corporations, foreign governments, and other artists.

Given all that history and all the successes of the past two decades, our current team at The Warhol wanted to mark the museum’s 20th anniversary with something really special. So, in direct response to two decades of visitor feedback—saying, in so many words, “Give us more Warhol!”—we’re telling Andy’s story, floor by floor. It’s a chronological look at the life and work of one of the most prolific contemporary artists of our time.

The results are astounding. The museum just feels like us, starting with a lobby that invites anyone and everyone to come hang with Andy. Then, from the seventh floor down, visitors get what they’ve been asking for—more Warhol, in a way that reveals more about who he was at each stage of his weird, cool, incredibly productive, and fascinating life. The rehang ends on the second floor, where we’ll be showing Warhol’s influence in the world today through traveling exhibitions.

It’s no static monument. Andy would hate that, and so would we. We’ll never run out of new ways to tell the Warhol story, so we’ll constantly be changing the works in the galleries and creating new experiences.

To the next 20 years!

Eric Shiner
Director, The Andy Warhol Museum