MEDIA RELEASE

Cal State Northridge to Receive Warhol Photos, Prints

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., April 4, 2008) — Cal State Northridge is one of only 183 colleges and universities across the United States selected to receive original photographs by acclaimed American artist Andy Warhol.

The gift of approximately 155 original Polaroid Photos and gelatin silver prints, valued at $124,900, is being made by the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, which is home to the program.

"Andy Warhol helped change the art-making world in the last half of the 20th Century. No artist more successfully blurred the centuries-old definitions of high art and low art. We are thrilled to have these works come to our permanent collection at Cal State Northridge," said Robert Bucker, dean of CSUN’s Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication.

Warhol Foundation President Joel Wachs said the aim of the Photographic Legacy Program is to provide greater access to Warhol’s artwork and process, and to enable a wide range of people from communities across the country to view and study this "important, yet relatively unknown, body of Warhol’s work."

The program offers institutions that do not have the means to acquire works by Warhol the opportunity to bring a significant number of photographs into their permanent collections, while allowing those institutions that do have Warhol in their collections to enrich the breadth and depth of their holdings, Wachs said.

"A wealth of information about Warhol’s process and his interactions with his sitters is revealed in these images," noted Jenny Moore, curator of the Photographic Legacy Program. "Through his rigorous—though almost unconscious—consistency in shooting, the true idiosyncrasies of his subjects are revealed.

"Often, he would shoot a person or event with both cameras, cropping one in Polaroid color as a ‘photograph’ and snapping the other in black and white as a ‘picture,’" Moore said. "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 fascinating whole."

Louise Lewis, director of CSUN’s Art Galleries, said Warhol’s gift will make a wonderful addition to the university’s collection.

"This is a significant donation both in terms of the prestige of the artist and, specifically, in the renewed interest of the use of the Polaroid as an art form," Lewis said.

Lewis said the gift would also "provide an excellent resource for students in popular culture, art and technology. Additionally, exhibitions will provide a wonderful opportunity for the community at large to see a lesser-known aspect of Warhol’s art that is currently being explored."

The Andy Warhol Foundation has given away more than $200 million in cash grants and art donations in its 20-year history.

"As we look to the future," Wachs said, "the Warhol Foundation will continue to be guided by the vision of its founder and benefactor, whose dying wish was to establish a foundation to advance visual arts. We will devote our energy and resources to expanding support for artists and arts institutions throughout the country, and we hope that the foundation’s accomplishments will inspire others to follow Andy’s visionary lead."

Andy Warhol was an internationally acclaimed artist and a key figure in the Pop art movement. A former commercial illustrator, Warhol was known for his art, his avant-garde filmmaking, his writing and for seamlessly bridging the worlds of bohemian street people, intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy aristocrats. He died in 1987.