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St. Olaf receives 150 original Warhol works

By Lyndel Owens '10
December 5, 2007

St. Olaf College's Flaten Art Museum will receive approximately 150 original Polaroid photographs and gelatin silver prints from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in time for the holidays.

The museum is among the 183 college and university art galleries nationwide selected to receive a total of 28,543 pieces with a value of more than $28 million dollars.

Foundation President Joel Wachs believes the pieces will "provide greater access to Warhol's artwork and process and 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."

Andy Warhol was a famed pop artist acclaimed for his Campbell's soup can drawings and series portrait of Marilyn Monroe. A controversial figure even when alive, he is well known for using silkscreen to produce his work in large quantities.

Ewald
Ewald
The pieces donated to St. Olaf will become part of the museum's permanent collection, though they won't be readily on display. Flaten Art Museum Curator Jill Ewald explains, "They're not going to be framed. So they might be on display, but on an ask-to-see-them basis. They'll be available for people to see when we receive them."

The Warhol artwork will be open to the public, and there will not be a cost to view the pieces.

The Andy Warhol Foundation, which aims to support art through cultural organizations that funnel the money toward individual artists, is enacting the giveaway to mark its 20th anniversary. Since its inception in 1987, the New York City foundation has gifted more than $200 million to "foster artistic expression and the creative process."

The Warhol donation is a direct way to achieve its objective as "a wealth of information about Warhol's process and his interactions with his sitters is revealed in these images," says Jenny Moore, curator of the foundation's Photographic Legacy Program. "Through his rigorous -- though almost unconscious -- consistency in shooting, the true idiosyncrasies of his subjects were revealed."

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.