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October 2017- Houston

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38 The TCs make up just a fraction of the massive Warhol Archives Collection, which is estimated to contain about a million objects. Those initially opened boxes were randomly selected, and there were some amazing contents inside: a Campbell's Soup can label (Turkey Vegetable); a souvenir pillow from the Pope's visit to New York City in 1965; a 1966 letter from Warhol's Paris gallerist, Ileana Sonnabend, discussing his "fl oating sculpture" (a reference to his ever-popular and now iconic Silver Clouds); and Warhol's bill from Columbus Hospital in New York, where his life was saved but body permanently scarred after he was shot by a wild feminist anarchist. There are a few hundred objects per box: fashion magazines, newspaper clippings, telephone messages, drawings, and letters to and from his contemporaries — including some drafts of fan mail typed out carefully on a typewriter by Warhol himself to his crush, Truman Capote. The ephemera reveal lesser-known facets of Andy Warhol's life and personality, such as his love for opera and lifelong dedication to his Byzantine Catholic faith. One prized possession saved from his childhood is a photograph of a Hollywood icon, dated 1941, autographed with the message "To Andrew Warhola From Shirley Temple." This single object connects Warhol's passion for celebrity and fi lm all the way back to those early years, as well as his keen interest in Temple herself, who was also born in 1928. He grew up in Pittsburgh and watched her fi lms during the Depression Era. Many years later, he would say, "I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer." The photo was once in his movie star album, which marks the beginning of his lifelong collecting obsession. At some point, Warhol framed it and placed it on his mantel, as seen in a photo of the artist at home taken in 1966, before the photo ended up in Time Capsule 61. Much more was still to be discovered in this treasure trove, so it became clear that these boxes, all 610 of them, must be opened. The collection of Time Capsules is a serial artwork; Warhol himself said that he would someday exhibit and sell them at his prime NYC dealer, Leo Castelli Gallery, where collectors could vie for them individually at a set price without knowing the contents. One wonders, however, if Warhol would have ever been able to part with them. In 2002, I left The Warhol to pursue graduate work in art history. I returned after three years in L.A. and a six-year stint in Europe, where I completed my Ph.D. at the University of the Arts London (with a focus on Post-Pop and Takashi Murakami, who is known as Japan's Andy Warhol). The timing was perfect. In 2007, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts provided funding to hire a team of professional catalogers to create a database of the contents of the 500-or-so Time Capsules yet to be opened. While working at Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London, I was offered a full- time position in Pittsburgh alongside the Warhol's chief archivist, doing what had ignited my professional ambitions in the fi rst place: researching and curating the artist's archives, with the mother lode drawn from the Time Capsules. Mining the boxes and piecing together the hidden parts of the artist's life with white gloves, under careful museum conditions, I began to know the real Andy Warhol. I pored through letters and trinkets, clippings and business documents, photographs and souvenirs. I started to think of him more familiarly as Andy, the way friends and family addressed him in the thousands of letters and postcards we researched. I got to know the person — not the celebrity, the famous artist, the New York socialite, or the "king of Pop," but the funny, insecure, shy, obsessive, thoughtful, sometimes heartbroken, and caring human being that he was. Andy had a sweet tooth, as exemplifi ed by the hard candies and sugar packets (pocketed from restaurants and hotels). He loved antiques shopping, never drove a car, and was a bit superstitious. Andy's mother, Julia Warhola, was not only close to him, but she contributed greatly to his identity as an artist and is even credited with the old-school fancy script that appears on his early drawings and paintings. TC -27 was created shortly after her death in 1972 and contains many of Julia's personal items. Marked "Andy Warhol's Mother / Clothes" in Andy's own handwriting (most TCs bear the writing of his assistants), the contents are touching Amy Adams wearing a Lisa Eisner necklace in Tom Ford's romantic thriller fi lm Nocturnal Animals WITHIN THE TIME CAPSULES, NO SPECIAL TREATMENT WAS GIVEN; ALL OBJECTS WERE EGALITARIAN, FROM A HOTEL NAPKIN TO A RARE CARTIER WATCH, MEDICAL DOCUMENTS TO CUTE VALENTINES, GROCERY BAGS TO DESIGNER HANDBAGS. Time Capsule 237, 1979, installed at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai in 2013 Cecil, a stuffed pooch supposedly belonging to Cecil B. DeMille, stood guard over the Factory in the 1960s. Dr. Cindy Lisica interviewed by Dragon TV network, during the Warhol exhibition at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2013 (continued on page 40) (continued from page 36)

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