College of Wooster Art Museum Receives Original Andy Warhol Photographs

Prints given by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Images of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1978) and Martha Graham (1979) are among the 151 photographs given to The College of Wooster Art Museum by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

WOOSTER, Ohio - The College of Wooster Art Museum recently received 151 Andy Warhol photographs from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York City. Given in honor of the foundation's 20th anniversary, Wooster was one of 183 college and university art museums across the country selected to participate in the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program.

The 101 Polaroids and 50 silver gelatin photographs depict a variety of subjects; from the Polaroid portraits of athletes such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, fashion icons such as Gianni Versace, and artists and pop singers such as Francesco Clemente and Paul Anka, to black-and-white silver gelatin photographs featuring street scenes, rodeos, and domestic life.

According to the foundation's president, Joel Wachs, "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," he said. "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."

The original Polaroid photographs and gelatin silver prints were 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," noted 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."

In the foundation's 20-year life span, it has given away more than $200 million in cash grants and art donations. "As we look to the future, the Warhol Foundation will continue to be guided by the vision of its founder and benefactor, whose dying wish was to establish a foundation to advance the visual arts," said Wachs. "We will devote our energy and resources to expanding support for artists and art institutions throughout the country, and we hope that the foundation's accomplishments will inspire others to follow Andy's visionary lead."

The College of Wooster Art Museum will present an exhibition of the Warhol Polaroids and black-and-white photographs during the 2009-2010 exhibition season.