Oct 23, 2025 By Stephanie Kalina-Metzger 4 min read

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” declares Ecclesiastes.

For those who have long considered Andy Warhol too fixated on the worldly to dwell on the spiritual, the exhibit “Andy Warhol: Vanitas,” which runs through March 9 at The Andy Warhol Museum, offers a powerful reconsideration.

Drawing its title from the art-historical genre that contemplates mortality, the futility of earthly pursuits, and life’s fleeting nature, the exhibition reveals a more contemplative side of Warhol. A collaboration with the SCHUNCK Museum in the Netherlands, the show invites visitors to see Warhol through a different lens.

What to expect

The exhibit takes visitors on a journey through three themes: Mortality, vanitas and temporality.

Amber Morgan, director of collections and exhibitions at The Warhol, said that the exhibit is especially timely as more audiences are increasingly taking an interest in exploring other aspects of Warhol’s career beyond his well-known pop art masterpieces.

“Warhol was strongly influenced by his Byzantine Catholic upbringing and the religious iconography that pervaded his early life,” Morgan notes.

Anna Plakas, culture journalist at Katholiek Nieuwsblad said of Warhol, “The American artist wrapped himself in an air of superficiality – but beneath that lay a layered and even faithful man. Warhol considered faith a private matter and therefore did not speak much about it, except that it was nice to go to church,” she said.

What “Vanitas” demonstrates is Warhol’s thoughtful, introspective side. A work like “The Last Supper” draws from a popular genre of paintings produced during the 16th and 17th centuries called memento mori- reminders of mortality. “The Last Supper” underscores the inevitability of not only Jesus Christ’s death, but all human death. The piece brings in Warhol’s Catholic background and was done with blacklight paint.

“The lighting changes as you sit with the piece, then you see the layers. It has this transformative quality to it and there’s an otherworldly mystique that he’s grappling with in this piece,” Morgan said.

Plakas contends that Warhol believed that fame was ephemeral too.

“He suggests, in a series of self-portraits, that behind his mask was emptiness,” she said. “It was as if he turned himself and his surroundings into caricatures-perhaps to make us reflect on the madness of the cult of which he had become the center. Remember you will die, his eyes seem to say.”

Visitors will also see Warhol’s “Shadows” paintings. “Shadows”, a series of colorful canvases with glitter, drew this observation from Warhol: “Someone asked me if I thought it was art, and I said no. There was a disco at the opening party. So, you could call it disco décor.”

Another intriguing part of the exhibit is ephemera from Warhol’s Time Capsule archive, including his electric toothbrush, acne cream, wig tape, junk mail and more.

“Time Capsule fits the theme so well because it shows him trying to capture time. It also shows that he’s a normal person and brings that human element into it,” Morgan said.

Warhol, being openminded, also explored other concepts.

“I think there will be surprises for visitors like healing crystals and astrology charts,” Morgan said, adding that it speaks to Warhol’s willingness to confront universal big questions and explore multiple paths in his search for answers.

From dark to light

As visitors make their way through the exhibit, there is almost a “dark-to-light” sort of feeling.

“Mortality can be a very dark subject, but they’ll see how Warhol brings a sense of humor and life to it. He helps us all think a little more introspectively on this universal experience with which we all deal,” Morgan said.

In the end “Vanitas” helps us all to understand that Warhol wasn’t only the master of pop-culture superficiality, but also an artist who grappled with mortality, faith and life’s mysteries.

For more information, go online to www.warhol.org