Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh to open series of art exhibits
PITTSBURGH – The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh will host new exhibitions. “Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith” will be presented through Jan. 5.
Although best known for her revolutionary contributions to the worlds of music and poetry, Smith is also an accomplished visual artist, whose drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.
Inspired by artists such as William Blake and Antonin Artaud, her drawings represent a powerful fusion of image and text. This retrospective exhibition includes more than 50 artworks produced by Smith during the past 30 years, including a recent series of large-scale drawings inspired by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. The exhibition also features original manuscripts of Smith’s writings, photographs and source material for her work.
“Robert Lepper, Artist & Teacher” will be displayed through Jan. 12.
This small exhibition focuses on the work of Robert Lepper (1906-1991), who taught design at Carnegie Mellon University from 1930 through 1975. While he helped to establish the first degree-program in the United States in industrial design, his best-known student was Andy Warhol.
As an artist, much of Lepper’s work came from commissions for large audiences – painted murals in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s; a sculpture for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York; corporate commissions and stained glass windows for churches.
The exhibition focuses on Lepper’s work as a muralist and sculptor and also on his teaching of Warhol. On view are artworks and archival material on loan from several collections, including Carnegie Mellon and the artist’s estate. Several works have not been exhibited previously.
“Americanisms: Shaping Art and Society in the 1950s” will be offered through July 20 next year.
In many ways, the concepts of American art and culture were defined in the 1950s by the emergence of the Beat writers and the Abstract Expressionists. Yet the decade itself was a period of contrasts, extremes and transitions.
While one generation was reacting to and recovering from World War II, the atomic bomb and Communism, another was being shaped by a burgeoning sense of freedom and consumerism. The 1950s saw the simultaneous emergence and success of Andy Warhol’s commercial work, Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, and Miles Davis’ avant-garde jazz compositions, and established these figures as representatives of American cultural identity here and abroad.
“Americanisms: Shaping Art and Society in the 1950s” brings together works from the collections of The Andy Warhol Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Grey Art Gallery & Study Center at New York University to explore the varied cultural terrain of this pivotal decade.
This is the first exhibition in a four-part series that during the next 10 years will examine Warhol within the decades in which he worked.
Performance artists come to Pittsburgh in collaboration with Performance Space 122 for “Off the Wall.”
Tickets are $15 for adults $10 for students. Seating is not assigned. A meet-the-artist reception will follow each performance.
Tickets are available through The Andy Warhol Museum at 412-237-8300.
The Andy Warhol Museum located in Pittsburgh, the place of Warhol’s birth, is one of the most comprehensive single-artist museums in the world. The Andy Warhol Museum is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
Hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Friday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The museum is closed Monday. Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for senior citizens and $4 for children and students. Members are admitted free of charge.
For more information, call 412-237-8300 or visit the Web site at www.warhol.org.