Andrew Warhola, better known as Andy Warhol, was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art.  Warhol was famous for his portraits of famous people, such as Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, as well as his painting of 100 cans of Campbell’s Soup.

At the time of his death in 1987, the artist had so many possessions it took Sotheby’s nine days to auction his estate, raising $20 million.Warhol was a compulsive collector.

Now archivists have been hired by the Andy Warhol  Foundation, for a fee of $600,000, to comb through 610 cardboard boxes, filing cabinets and a shipping container of ‘junk’ collected by Andy Warhol.

Over the next six years, every item will be meticulously photographed and catalogued, from taxi cab receipts, to fan mail, to scrappy notes. Where possible the bizarre items will be researched.

The director of the Andy Warhol Museum will host wives of 19 head of states  and representatives of the European Union, in September. “I would like to give them a Warhol experience,” says Thomas Sokolowki. He would like to see them dressed in white smocks and gloves, just the same as the archivists wear and give them a box to sift through.

The White House has not yet decided it if will go along with the idea.

One of the early finds by the archivists, has been a signed skinny-dipping poster of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jackie O., was a frequent visitor to Warhol’s Montauk, N.Y., beachfront estate. Onassis got a paparazzi to shoot a photo of Jacky skinny-dipping. It ended up in the hands of Larry Flynt, who turned it into a poster for his porn magazine. Jacky sent a copy, as a joke, to Andy Warhol, signing it ‘For Andy, with enduring affection, Jackie Montauk’.

Warhol hated to throw anything away. When he died his four-storey Manhattan townhouse was jammed packed with stuff, including a drawer of gems worth $1million. Warhol collected things and placed them  in cardboard boxes, dating and taping them shut as ‘time capsules’.

It is 18 months since the archivists began the project in earnest, having opened 177 boxes , each with between  400 -1200 items inside.

In September an ‘Object of the Week’ blog will be aired on the Internet by the archivists.
While In Byron Bay, Australia, Warhol painted the outside of a toilet wall. The next morning the municipality ruled that ‘graffiti’ was not becoming on a public building and had workmen immediately paint it over.

In September an ‘Object of the Week’ blog will be aired on the Internet by the archivists.

While In Byron Bay, Australia, Warhol painted the outside of a toilet wall. The next morning the municipality ruled that ‘grafitti’ was not becoming on a public building and had workmen immediately paint it over.

This ticket was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, general, society, travel, women. You can follow any responses to this ticket through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Mountains Of Junk Worth A Fortune”

1. dropjack.com Says:
   August 23rd, 2009 at 8:15 pm

   Mountains Of Junk Worth A Fortune…

   When you are famous and a compulsive collector, even your junk is worth a fortune, particularly when it takes years to sort it out….

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.