Warhol @ Penn Again

Exhibitions and Symposium

Symposium
Warhol Wednesdays

Exhibitions
Multimedia
About

In 2009, Gregory McCoy, a passionate Andy Warhol Collector from New Jersey, discovered the first of his 323 Marilyn Monroe two-and-three-color screen prints, which he purchased from the Swedish Rare Book and Art dealer, Börge Bengtsson. Since his discovery, McCoy has dedicated the last ten years to unraveling the story of the origins of the screen prints and ascertaining the degree to which Andy Warhol may or may not have been involved in their production. It is possible that the Marilyns were produced in Sweden in 1968 or 1969 at the time of Warhol’s first international retrospective, held at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Based on the surviving evidence, McCoy has proposed that the Marilyns may have been intended to cover the exterior of the Museet’s façade or possibly to be sold as posters in the museum shop. In 2016, McCoy was in search of a venue to exhibit his unique screen prints and to engage the Penn community in a discussion related to Andy Warhol, the Marilyn screen prints--their origins, screen print techniques, legal status, market value--as well as the art of collecting. It was determined that the Kislak Center would present the Marilyn screen prints in an exhibition titled “Out of Sight: An Art Collector, A Discovery and Andy Warhol” on display in the Goldstein Family Gallery. Three smaller exhibitions are included under the umbrella theme: "Andy Warhol @ Penn Again," "Marilyn Monroe: From Stage to Silkscreen," and "Translations of Warhol." The first exhibition focuses on Warhol’s 1965 retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, held in the former Furness Library at the University of Pennsylvania in October-November 1965. The second exhibition highlights the actor Marilyn Monroe who served as Warhol’s muse. The third features published translations of Warhol’s words, and is centered on the distinctive book that accompanied the 1968 Stockholm exhibition. The first two of these auxiliary exhibitions are located in the Kamin Gallery on the first floor of the Van Pelt - Dietrich Library, and the third is in the Snyder-Granader Study Alcove in the Library’s Kislak Center.

Out of Sight: An Art Collector, A Discovery and Andy Warhol, Goldstein Gallery (May 19-July 28,2022)

Please join us on Thursday, May 19, from 5:30-8:00 pm to celebrate the opening of Out of Sight: An Art Collector, A Discovery, and Andy Warhol. Curator David McKnight will be giving a talk about the creation of the exhibition. To register

Andy Warhol @ Penn Again, Kamin Gallery (April 18-July 7, 2022)

Marilyn Monroe: From Stage to Silkscreen, Kamin Gallery (April 18-July 7, 2022)

Translations of Warhol, Snyder-Granader Study Alcove, Kislak Center (June 20-July 1, 2022)

Gallery

More images to come.

Andy Warhol holding 'Marilyn Acetate I' taken in 1964 at the Factory in New York. Photographer Owen Humphrey 2019. Source PA Images / Alamy Stock Phot.

Album covers collage including John Lennon, a banana, and more (unidentified)

Translating Warhol: Symposium

Thursday - Friday, June 23 - 24, 2022

Hybrid event: Class of ‘78 Pavilion, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania and on Zoom

About the Symposium

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) is one of the most famous and influential artists of the twentieth century, and a vast global literature about Warhol and his work exists. Yet almost nothing has been written about the role of translations of his words, and those of his critics, in his international reputation. “Translating Warhol” aims to fill this gap, developing the topic in multiple directions and in the context of the reception of Warhol’s work in various countries. The numerous translations of Warhol’s writings, words, and ideas offer a fertile case study of how American art was, and is, viewed from the outside.

The contemporary artist Ai Weiwei has often said that the first book he read in English, when he came from China to the U.S. in the early 1980s, was The Philosophy of Andy Warhol because it was easy for a non-English speaker to understand. A closer look—the kind afforded by the intimacy of translation—offers a different picture, however. With its double meanings, ambiguities, paradoxes, now-obscure cultural references, and slang, Warhol’s book creates challenges of comprehension even for someone whose first language is English. “Translating Warhol” explores the fascinating questions of interpretation raised by these challenges. Linguistic as well as other forms of translation are considered. “Translating Warhol” is the first study of the history and implications of the numerous translations of Warhol, revealing, for example, how Warhol’s queer identity has been either concealed or emphasized through the process of translation, or how translation has affected the presentation of his political and social positions and attitudes.

A complementary exhibition, “Translations of Warhol,” featuring published translations of the artist’s words, is on view June 20-July 1 in the Snyder-Granader Study Alcove at the Kislak Center. This exhibition features a sampling of books and interviews by Warhol and his collaborators that are discussed in the symposium.

“Translating Warhol” is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Symposium Program

Thursday, June 23, 2022

4:00pm: Symposium check-in opens

4:30-5:15pm: Optional in-person curatorial tour of Andy Warhol @ Penn Again exhibitions

5:30-5:45 pm: Welcome, Sean Quimby, Associate University Librarian and Director of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and Director of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania; introduction of keynote speaker, Reva Wolf, Professor of Art History, State University of New York at New Paltz

5:45-7:00 pm: Keynote address, Warhol in French, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Honorary Professor, University of Paris I—Pantheon-Sorbonne (read by Pierre Von-Ow, PhD student, Yale University)

7:00-8:00 pm: Reception

Friday, June 24, 2022

8:30-9:30 am: Coffee and continental breakfast

9:30-9:40 am: Welcome, David McKnight, Director, The Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Curator of Manuscripts, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries

9:40-10:00 am: Introduction, Translating Warhol: Turbamento, Transmutation, Transference, Reva Wolf, Professor of Art History, State University of New York at New Paltz

10:00-11:00 am: PANEL 1—WARHOL IN NORTHERN EUROPE AND ENGLAND, moderated by David McKnight, Kislak Center, University of Pennsylvania

Warhol in Translation, Stockholm 1968: “Many Works and Few Motifs,” Annika Öhrner, Associate Professor of Art History, Södertörn University, Stockholm

Translating Warhol for Television: Andy Warhol’s America, Jean Wainwright, Professor of Contemporary Art and Photography, University for the Creative Arts, Surrey, UK

11:00-11:30 am: Coffee break

11:30 am-12:30 pm: PANEL 2—WARHOL IN GERMANY AND ITALY, moderated by Ann E. Moyer, Professor of History, Director of the Center for Italian Studies, and Co-Executive Editor, Journal of the History of Ideas, University of Pennsylvania

Schnecken, Schlitzmonger, and Poltergeist: Andy Warhol in German—Translations and Cultural Context, Nina Schleif, Curator of Prints and Drawings, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München

La Filosofia di Andy Warhol and the Turmoil of Art in Italy, 1983, Francesco Guzzetti, Senior Lecturer of Art History, Università degli Studi di Firenze

12:30-2:00 pm: Lunch break

2:00-3:00 pm: PANEL 3—TRANSMUTATION, TRANSFORMATION, AND THEORIES OF TRANSLATION, moderated by Kathryn Hellerstein, Ruth Meltzer Director of the Jewish Studies Program and Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania

Andy and Julia in Rusyn: Warhol’s Translation of his Mother in Film and Video, Elaine Rusinko, Associate Professor Emerita of Russian, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Translating Texts, Translating Readers: Could Andy Warhol’s Writings Be Translated into Indian Languages? Deven M. Patel, Associate Professor, Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania

3:00-3:30 pm: Coffee break

3:30-4:30 pm: Round table with all the speakers

4:30-5:30 pm: Reception

You may contact the symposium team with any questions at warholtranslationsymposium@gmail.com.

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The Penn Libraries and the program organizers are grateful to the Terra Foundation for American Art for its generous support of the symposium.

About the Terra Foundation for American Art

The Terra Foundation for American Art supports individuals, organizations, and communities to advance expansive understandings of American art. Established in 1978 and headquartered in Chicago, with an office in Paris, the Terra Foundation is committed to fostering cross-cultural dialogues on American art locally, nationally, and internationally, through its grant program, collection, and initiatives.

Warhol Wednesdays

Warhol Wednesdays features presentations by noted experts on five different topics related to the Andy Warhol @ Penn Again project. These include Cheryl Harper’s rear view mirror portrait of Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable performance at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia on December 17, 1968 and Jo Ann Caplin’s remarkable comparative study of Leonardo, Picasso and Warhol. Caplin draws a number of similarities and differences between these three great artists. Art historian Patrik Andersson will discuss the formative years of curator Pontus Hultén, the inaugural Director of the Moderna Museet from 1958 to 1972 who organized Warhol’s 1968 Moderna Museet exhibition. Warhol Collector Paul Maréchal will discuss collecting Warhol and producing his three Warhol catalogues raisonnés devoted to Warhol’s commissioned record covers, advertisements, and posters. Finally, Börge Bengtsson will discuss his acquisition of the first Marilyn screen print in 2009, which he then sold to Gregory McCoy, and his subsequent search for additional copies of the Marilyn screen prints. On May 11 there will be a special screening of Henry Hathaway’s iconic film noir Niagara (1953), which features Marilyn Monroe in the role of the Rose Loomis.

All of these events are scheduled to appear as Zoom presentations. However, Maréchal and Bengtsson will appear in person in the Class of ‘78 Pavilion in addition to the Zoom broadcast of their lectures. Registration is required for both Zoom and in person events. Registration links for each event can be found by clicking "For more information" under each event listed below.

April 27

Cheryl Harper: "Setting the Stage for Warhol and the Philadelphia Exploding Plastic Inevitable Event in 1966."

April 27, 2022

For more information and registration
May 4

Jo Ann Caplin: "Leonardo, Picasso, Warhol"

May 4, 2022

For more information and registration
May 18

Patrik Lars Andersson: Moving Art: Pontus Hultén and the Question of Andy Warhol’s Copies

May 18, 2022

For more information and registration
June 1

Paul Maréchal: On Collecting Andy Warhol

June 1, 2022

For more information and registration
June 8

Screening of Niagara (1953), directed by Henry Hathaway

June 8, 2022

For more information and registration
June 22

Amazing Stories of a Collector: An Interview with Börje Bengtsson (Bengtsson Fine Art, Landskrona, Sweden)

June 22, 2022

For more information and registration

Exhibitions

Warhol @ Penn Again

Out of Sight: An Art Collector, A Discovery and Andy Warhol

In 2009, the American Andy Warhol Collector Gregory McCoy discovered a treasure trove of exhibition posters depicting Warhol’s famous 1962 photo silkscreen paintings of actress Marilyn Monroe. For the past twelve years, McCoy has attempted to determine the origins of these striking posters, which he believes were produced at the time of Warhol’s 1968 Moderna Museet retrospective exhibition. A selection of McCoy's posters will be exhibited and contextualized in the Kislak Center's Goldstein Gallery.

Goldstein Gallery (May 19 - July 28, 2022)

Marilyn Monroe: From Stage to Silkscreen

On August 5, 1962 Marilyn Monroe died of apparent suicide from an overdose of Nembutal, a highly addictive anti-depressant. At the time of her death, Monroe was a controversial, yet iconic Hollywood actor, who many still regard as one of Hollywood’s most alluring and beautiful stars to have ever appeared on the silver screen. Upon learning of her death, Andy Warhol discovered Eugene Korman’s 1952 publicity shot of Monroe, who was filming Niagara (1953) at the time. Warhol’s use of the Korman photograph combined with his use of photo silkscreen painting, resulted in one of Warhol’s most famous artworks: Gold Marilyn (1962). The items on view in the Kamin Gallery were discovered among the historic Gotham Book Mart Collection.

Kamin Gallery (April 18 - July 7, 2022)

This exhibition is not endorsed by the Marilyn Monroe Estate.

Andy Warhol @ Penn Again

Andy Warhol @ Penn Again explores the relationship between the famed American Pop artist and the University of Pennsylvania. At its heart lies the Institute of Contemporary Art’s (ICA) mythic 1965 retrospective: concomitant with Warhol’s rise to fame, ICA held his first solo retrospective from October 8th to November 21st, 1965. In some ways, Andy Warhol @ Penn Again belongs to a lineage of meta-exhibitions about Warhol shows, including a 2011 exhibition at ICA and a 2018 exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Sweden. Indeed, in this show we present ephemera and photographs from the 1965 exhibition and archival materials attesting to its reception and legacy to convey the complete history of Warhol at Penn—and perhaps even to shed light on how Warhol influenced curatorial practice and institutional identity at ICA. Among the objects on display, you will find copies of copies of copies, exhibitions about exhibitions, and endless attempts at invention and reinvention.

Kamin Gallery (April 18 - July 7, 2022)

Multimedia

General Resources about Andy Warhol

Warhol's Art and Technique

Andy Warhol and the Moderna Museet

* designates uncaptioned videos

The videos linked from this page are not the property of Penn Libraries. For assistance with uncaptioned videos, email kislak@pobox.upenn.edu

Project History

In 2016, Eric Allen Weinstein, who was affiliated with Kelly Writers House at the time, introduced me to Gregory McCoy, a local New Jersey Andy Warhol collector. At our first meeting, Gregory, with a large poster tube in tow, unrolled a selection of his Marilyn Monroe screen prints. They were dazzling and they possessed a certain nordic charm. Gregory proceeded to tell the tale of how he had discovered and purchased his first Marilyn screen print in 2009. To date, he has acquired 323 examples. The evidence suggests that the screen prints were produced at the time of Andy Warhol’s first international museum exhibition, held at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm from February-March 1968.

For the past decade the artwork has been stored in Philadelphia. Weinstein engaged two experts to examine the Marilyn screen prints in an effort to identify their authorship, genre, and pedagogical value. While the prints’ origins and authorship still remain still, it is clear that they hold pedagogical value. In the summer of 2017, David McKnight, the exhibition Curator and the Director of the Kislak Center, agreed to host the exhibition of McCoy's screen prints.

Project Team

Mary Ellen Burd, Director of Strategic Communications
Sal Caputo, Director of Facilities Management
Eric Dillalogue, Assistant Director of Operations, Kislak Center
Sam Duplessis, Director of Advancement
Leo Gearin, Curatorial Intern
Kenneth Goldsmith
David Hales, Drummond Framing
Bart Johnson, Bart Johnson Productions
Maureen McCormick, Atelier Art Storage
Liz McDermott, Senior Conservation Technician/Exhibits
David McKnight, Director of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Gregory McCoy
Brittany Merriam, Director of Exhibits
Hannah Muckle, Associate Director of Development
David Nerenberg, Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director for Organizational Effectiveness
Sean Quimby, Director of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
Sarah Reidell, Margy E. Meyerson Head of Conservation
Claire Squire, Atelier Art Storage
Bob Tursack
Dustin Tursack
Reva Wolf, Professor of Art History at the State University of New York at New Paltz
Ken Zeferes, Senior Business Administrator

Special thanks to Leslie Vallhonrat, John Pollack, Lynne Farrington.

Symposium: Speakers

Francesco Guzzetti, University of Florence

La Filosofia di Andy Warhol and the Turmoil of Art in Italy, 1983

Francesco Guzzetti is Senior Lecturer of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Florence. He holds a PhD in art history from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa. He specializes in mid-twentieth-century Italian art and its relationship with that of the United States. He has received fellowships from the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), NY, Harvard University, Magazzino Italian Art Foundation, and The Morgan Library & Museum. He recently curated the exhibition Facing America: Mario Schifano 1960-1965 (CIMA, 2021). He is currently writing a book about the relationships between Arte Povera and American art.

Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, University of Paris I—Pantheon-Sorbonne

Warhol in French

Jean-Claude Lebensztejn is a Paris-based art historian and critic. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Paris I—Pantheon-Sorbonne. His numerous publications range in subject and time period from Jacopo Pontormo and the sixteenth century to Malcolm Morley and Paul Sharits and the twentieth. His book Figures pissantes, 1280-2014 recently appeared in English translation as Pissing Figures 1280-2014, New York, Zwirner, 2017.

David McKnight, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries

University of Pennsylvania Liaison, Translating Warhol

David McKnight is Director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Curator of Manuscripts, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Mr. McKnight has an expertise in the history of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century avant-garde literature, art and publishing. Recently he curated two major exhibitions, Experiment: Printing the Canadian Imagination (Bruce Peel Centre, University of Alberta, 2018) and Wise Men Fished Here: A Centenary Exhibition in Honor of the Gotham Book Mart: 1920–2020 (Kislak Center for Special Collections, 2019). McKnight co-edited Cross-Cultural Pound (Clemson University Press, 2021) with John G. Gery and Walter Baumann. He has worked closely with Reva Wolf on “Translating Warhol.”

Annika Öhrner, Södertörn University

Warhol in Translation, Stockholm 1968: “Many Works and Few Motifs”

Annika Öhrner is Associate Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies in the Department of Art History at Södertörn University in Stockholm. Öhrner edited the anthology Art in Transfer in the Era of Pop (2017), which was supported by a Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant. Among her recent publications are: “Exploring the Territories of the Avant-Garde: Ivan Aguéli and the Institutions of his Time,” in Anarchist, Artist, Sufi: The Politics, Painting, and Esotericism of Ivan Aguéli, ed. Mark Sedgwick (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), and “Niki de Saint Phalle Playing with the Feminine in the Male Factory: ‘Hon - en katedral,’” Stedelijk Studies 7, 2018.

Deven M. Patel, University of Pennsylvania

Translating Texts, Translating Readers: Could Andy Warhol’s Writings Be Translated into Indian Languages?

Deven M. Patel is an Associate Professor in the Department of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on classical Indian humanities, especially Sanskrit literature, Indian philosophy, aesthetics, and translation theory and practice. He is the author of Text to Tradition: The Naisadhiyacarita and Literary Community in South Asia (2014).

Elaine Rusinko, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Andy and Julia in Rusyn: Warhol’s Translation of his Mother in Film and Video

Elaine Rusinko, emerita associate professor of Russian at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is a scholar of Russian and Carpatho-Rusyn culture. Her book, Straddling Borders: Literature and Identity in Subcarpathian Rus' (2003), is the first English-language history of Carpatho-Rusyn literature. ‘We Are All Warhol’s Children’: Andy and the Rusyns (2012) examines Warhol’s ethnic background and the reception in his homeland of the most famous American of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry. Her biography of Julia Warhola, Andy Warhol’s Mother: Julia Warhola and the Carpatho-Rusyn Immigrant Experience, is forthcoming from The University of Pittsburgh Press.

Nina Schleif, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München

Schnecken, Schlitzmonger, and Poltergeist: Andy Warhol in German—Translations and Cultural Context

Nina Schleif holds degrees in art history and American studies. She is Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München. In 2013 she curated the exhibition and edited the catalogue Reading Andy Warhol at the Brandhorst Museum, Munich, the first international consideration of Warhol’s book oeuvre. In 2016 she published the monograph Drag & Draw. Andy Warhol. The Unknown Fifties.

Pierre Von-Ow, Yale University

Presenter of Warhol in French

Pierre Von-Ow is a PhD candidate in History of Art at Yale University. His research focuses primarily on the intersections of arts and sciences in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and the British Empire. He recently curated the online exhibition “William Hogarth’s Topographies” for the Lewis Walpole Library and co-edited with Enrico Camporesi an anthology of Jean-Claude Lebensztejn’s writings on film, Propos filmiques. En pure perte (2021), which includes a French version of Lebensztejn’s paper for “Translating Warhol.”

Jean Wainwright, University for the Creative Arts

Translating Warhol for Television: Andy Warhol’s America

Jean Wainwright is Professor of Contemporary Art and Photography and Director of the Fine Art and Photography Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts, Surrey, UK. She has published extensively in the contemporary arts field, contributing to numerous catalogues and books as well as appearing on television and radio programs (including Woman’s Hour, Today Programme, Channel Four, and the BBC). Her Audio Arts archive, begun in 1996, continues to expand, and to date she has interviewed over 1,800 artists, makers, photographers, filmmakers, and curators; 177 of her published interviews conducted for Audio Arts went online at the Tate in 2014. She has curated several recent exhibitions in the UK and Europe.

Reva Wolf, State University of New York at New Paltz

Translating Warhol: Turbamento, Transmutation, Transference

Reva Wolf, Professor of Art History at the State University of New York at New Paltz, teaches and writes on art of the eighteenth century to the present and on the historiography of art. She is the author of Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s (1997), Goya and the Satirical Print (1991), and numerous articles and essays, and is co-editor of Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives (2020), which was selected as a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Her co-authored essay, “Cosmic Jokes and Tangerine Flake: Translating Andy Warhol's POPism,” in Complementary Modernisms in China and the United States (2020), which developed out of a conference of the same title held in Hangzhou, China, in 2016, supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, was the starting point for the “Translating Warhol” symposium.