“Femme Touch”
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA
Opens April 24, 2020
Andy Warhol’s stories are told and retold through his artwork, his career in commercial advertising, experimental films and avant-garde design. However, The Andy Warhol Museum will be bringing an alternative perspective to the visionary’s narrative, one that is centered around the women who influenced his life. From the radical feminist who almost killed him, transgender icons and stalwart members of the underground scene to Warhol’s own artistic mother, this exhibition explores the women who were written out of the artist’s history.
Femme Touch is a museum-wide exhibit that will transform five floors of the museum’s permanent collection galleries to position Warhol’s work in dialogue with artifacts and artwork from the lives of these fascinating women and femmes. The exhibition also brings forth areas of the museum’s archives, an extensive holding of over half a million diverse objects, and Warhol’s films, many of which are being newly restored and digitized in an ongoing preservation initiative.
Through cross-departmental collaboration, curators, educators and archivists have come together to develop the exhibition which showcases individuals such as Candy Darling, Tally Brown, Donna Jordan, Jane Forth, Julia Warhola, Barbara Rubin, Mario Montez, Brigid Berlin and Valerie Solanas. As the museum continues to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary, this investigation into the lives and careers of the women and femmes who impacted Warhol will elicit a better understanding of the artist’s worldview and the social contexts in which he operated.
