Original photographs by Andy Warhol on display at MSU Billings
Published: October 21, 2010
The MSU Billings Art Department presents an exhibition of original photographs by Andy Warhol, Nov. 5-Dec. 10 at Northcutt Steele Gallery, located on the first floor of the Liberal Arts building at the campus in Billings.
In honor of the 20th anniversary of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, based in New York City, 159 original photographs by the famed pop artist were presented to the MSU Billings Department of Art. This gift collection is one aspect of the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, an unprecedented opportunity available to educational institutions, museums, galleries and art collections across the United States.
The exhibition opens at 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5, with a lecture titled “Warhol 101,” presented by MSU Billings Art Historian Dr. Patricia Vettel-Becker.
A public reception and refreshments follow at 5 p.m., with visitors encouraged to dress as like the famous pop artist for a look-alike contest.
The MSU Billings Department of Art is the only Montana educational institution to be accepted into the program. The acquisition of this unique collection is the result of a collaborative effort. Longtime MSU Billings Professor Dr. Connie M. Landis worked with MSU Billings Reference Librarian/Archivist Eileen Wright to meet the display and storage archival requirements set by the Warhol Foundation. In addition, the MSU Billings Art Students’ League contributed funds to cover the cost of meeting the faming requirements outlined by the Warhol Foundation.
Of the 159 photographs, 105 are Polaroid images and 54 are 8-by-10-inch black and white silver gelatin photos. The subject matter includes: portraits and figure studies, landscapes, cityscapes, nature close-ups, still lives and loaves of bread.
The collection also includes images of an array of famous people (Paloma Picasso, Calvin Klein, Diane Von Furstenberg, Jerry Zipkin, Rex Reed, Chris Evert, Robin Leach, Wayne Gretzky, Ron Gould and Truman Capote), as well as unidentified “folk,” captured by Warhol, who took hundreds of photographs most days of his adult life.
Jenny Moore, curator of the Photographic Legacy Program, selected the photographs for the MSU Billings collection. “A wealth of information about Warhol’s process and his interactions with his sitters is revealed in these images,” she says. “Through his rigorous – though almost unconscious – consistency in shooting, the idiosyncrasies of his subjects were revealed.
“Often, he would shoot a person or event with cameras, cropping one in Polaroid color as a ‘photograph’ and snapping the other in black and white as a ‘picture.’” By presenting both kinds of images side by side, the Photographic Legacy Program allows viewers “to move back and forth between moments of Warhol’s ‘art,’ work,’ and ‘life’ – inseparable parts of a whole,” she notes.
The gallery is open from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday.
For more information, contact Grace Frankforter, Northcutt Steele Gallery, at 406-657-2324, or Dr. Connie M. Landis, at 406-657-2981.
