EAST LANSING, Mich. – The Art Museum at Michigan State University will be adding at least 150 photographs by legendary artist Andy Warhol to its permanent collection, thanks to a gift from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
The foundation announced last week an unprecedented gift of Warhol art to 183 college and university art museums across the United States. The total gift, made through the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program in honor of the foundation’s 20th anniversary, consists of 28,543 original Warhol photographs valued in excess of $28 million.
“We are very grateful to have been selected by the foundation to receive this collection from the Photographic Legacy Program,” said Susan Bandes, director of the Art Museum at MSU.
“As we gain perspective on the 20th century, Andy Warhol’s seminal role becomes more and more evident. Many successive generations of artists have been influenced by his work as a painter, printmaker and filmmaker," Bandes said. "While his photographs are less well-known, this collection will offer students and visitors a way to understand his process as he went from chosen subject to art object. We already have a much beloved print of Marilyn Monroe and another of Jackie Kennedy, but this gift enhances our holdings immensely.”
According to Joel Wachs, foundation president, the aim of the Photographic Legacy Program is to provide greater access to Warhol’s artwork and process, and to enable a wide range of people from communities across the country to view and study this important yet relatively unknown body of Warhol’s work. The program offers institutions that do not have the means to acquire works by Warhol the opportunity to bring a significant number of photographs into their permanent collections, while allowing those institutions that do have Warhol in their collections to enrich the breadth and depth of their holdings.
Each of the participating institutions will receive approximately 150 original Polaroid photographs and gelatin silver prints selected by Jenny Moore, curator of the Photographic Legacy Program.
“A wealth of information about Warhol’s process and his interactions with his sitters is revealed in these images,” said Moore. “Through his rigorous – though almost unconscious – consistency in shooting, the true idiosyncrasies of his subjects were revealed. Often, he would shoot a person or event with both cameras, cropping one in Polaroid color as a ‘photograph’ and snapping the other in black and white as a ‘picture.’ By presenting both kinds of images side by side, the Photographic Legacy Program allows viewers to move back and forth between moments of Warhol’s ‘art,’ ‘work,’ and ‘life’ – inseparable parts of a fascinating whole.”
MSU will receive its photographs in the spring and plans on displaying the exhibit in May 2008.
The Art Museum at MSU is located in Kresge Art Center, at the intersection of Physics and Auditorium Roads between the Alumni Chapel and the MSU Auditorium For additional information and hours, call (517) 355-7631 or visit www.artmuseum.msu.edu.
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