A significant Andy Warhol retrospective exhibition will be staged in Walsall and Wolverhampton in 2009. It comes as a result of Anthony d’Offay giving his £125m collection of 725 art works to the nation.
“Andy Warhol: posters and paintings” will be at Wolverhampton Art Gallery (28th Mar to 21st Sept 09), fitting in nicely with their final major survey show of pop art: “Supermarket Pop: Art & Consumerism” (until 28th Feb 09). And “Andy Warhol: drawings” will be at the New Art Gallery at Walsall (15th May to 5th July 09).
Sadly the photography shows resulting from Anthony d’Offay’s gift are scattered to the winds, from a West Midlands perspective. An excellent collection of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs is safely tucked away from the tabloid press and the new ‘extreme images’ law, in the wilds of Inverness. Cardiff gets Diane Arbus. And Edinburgh gets Francesca Woodman, although only as part of a group show.
by m8e
01 Feb 2009 at 13:35
I’ll have to mention this to my London girlfriend, Dr Jean Wainwright, who is the world’s foremost authority on Warhol. Anyway, hopefully these exhibitions will be a bit more engaging than the exhibition of Warhol’s films at Ikon Eastside last year, which had rendered the poor security man completely comatose when I went there – such that he would have made a fitting subject for a Warhol film himself.