Member previews: Oct 17–19, 2019

From soup cans to celebrity portraits, electric chairs to album covers, the images of Andy Warhol are among the most recognized and celebrated the world over.

This major retrospective—the first to be organized by a US institution in 30 years—builds on the wealth of new research, scholarship, and perspectives that has emerged since Andy Warhol’s early death in 1987. More than 350 works offer a new view of the beloved and iconic American Pop artist, not only illuminating the breadth, depth, and interconnectedness of Warhol’s production across the entirety of his career but also highlighting the ways that Warhol anticipated the issues, effects, and pace of our current digital age.

Warhol gained fame in the 1960s for his Pop masterpieces, widely known and reproduced works that often eclipse his equally significant late work as well as his crucial beginnings in the commercial art world. This exhibition brings together all aspects and periods of his varied and prolific career and includes paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, videos, archival and printed material, installation, films, and media works. By showcasing the full continuum of Warhol’s work, rather than focusing on a certain period, this presentation demonstrates that the artist didn’t slow down after surviving the assassination attempt that nearly took his life in 1968 but entered into a period of intense experimentation.

Warhol’s genius lay in his ability to identify cultural patterns and to deploy images not only as representations, but also as generative vehicles. Through repetition, distortion, camouflage, and the recycling of images—and his own unique persona—Warhol continues to challenge our faith in images and the value of cultural icons.

This exhibition was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

This exhibition requires a $7 special exhibition ticket, available in early fall 2019.