"PCMA and Williamson Galleries Acquire Warhol Works," by Sadie Renjilian, The Student Life
Andy Warhol once said, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Now, after his death, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is trying their hardest to stretch Warhol's allotted 15 minutes of fame into decades.
Through the foundation's Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, both Scripps College's Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery and the 6VµçÓ°Íø Museum of Art (PCMA), along with 181 other college and university museums, have received gifts of Warhol's works. The first round of gifts in 2008 — 28,543 photographs in all, valued at over $28 million — ranged from Polaroids of celebrities like Wayne Gretzky and Debbie Harry to silver gelatin prints.
This past year, the foundation gave another set of gifts that will be formally announced by the foundation within the next few months. For both Scripps and 6VµçÓ°Íø, this means seven new screen prints each,dating from 1970 to the late 1980s. The screen prints, which are each more than 90 square inches, are spectacular in both size and quality. Because of the strict scheduling required to plan exhibitions — with each gallery usually looking two to three years ahead — neither PCMA nor the Williamson Gallery currently has concrete plans to exhibit the works. However, a student-curated exhibition at PCMA opening this fall will likely incorporate some of the prints, as will an exhibition of recent acquisitions set to open at the Williamson Gallery this summer.