15 Things You Didn't Know About the Andy Warhol Museum

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The Andy Warhol Museum used to be an industrial warehouse.

The museum, which houses thousands of Andy Warhol works, actually used to be the 1911 Frick & Lindsay warehouse, a distribution center for products shipped to mills and mines. Architect Richard Gluckman repurposed the industrial building for financial reasons. Even though it's expensive turn a building into a climate-controlled environment that will accommodate fragile artwork, it's still a lot cheaper to establish a museum in a pre-existing building than to build from ground up. 

In addition, former industrial structures are usually built with metal frameworks and reinforced concrete to withstand abuse from machinery and heavy loads—the ideal environment for extensive art installations. Obviously, Gluckman knew what he was doing.

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Gluckman had walls added and floors removed to enhance your museum experience.

The Warhol is praised for being a hybrid of new, artistic endeavors and an the industrial lifestyle of decades past. At the same time, the building was renovated to accommodate various galleries of diverse works.

New walls were added to give variety to exhibition space. Floors have also been partially removed to maximize height. Steering away from traditional exhibition design, the Andy Warhol Museum swapped wall-to-wall galleries for intimate, scaled rooms and extensive 50-by-80-feet galleries.

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It's the largest museum dedicated to a single artist in the United States.

With over 8,000 of Warhol's paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures, as well as an extensive film and video collection, it's safe to say that the museum does it's best to live up to the artist's legacy.

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The museum features the handiwork of Warhol's mother, Julia Warhola.

You could say Julia Warhola played a pivotal role in helping build the foundation of Warhol's artistic career. When Warhol was young, his mother made bouquets of paper flowers in tin cans, which she sold to make ends meet.

Later, Warhol even incorporated his mother's lettering into many of his works. The artist even crafted his signature after his mother's, and for good reason too. Apparently, Warhola had a knack for typography, a talent that won her an award from the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1958. 

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Andy Warhol and Carnegie Institute, which sponsors the museum, go way back.

The Carnegie Institute (today The Carnegie Museum of Art), one of the sponsors of the Andy Warhol Museum, played a role in Warhol's life even before anyone knew about the king of Pop art. Encouraged by his mother, Warhol attended free classes in studio art and art appreciation every Saturday at the Carnegie Institute. Later, he attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and graduated in 1949.

Today, the museum offers studio art classes for kids in Pittsburgh and an Education Resource Center for schoolteachers.

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On display are Warhol's collaborative works with artists like Basquiat, Haring, and Clemente.

While the museum's collection of course includes Warhol's famous Campbell's Soup Cans, along with his portraits Liz, Jackie, Marilyn, Elvis, and even Mao, it also features his equally famous collaborative works with artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Francesco Clemente.

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The original architect of the building is W.G. Wilkens.

The original architectural mastermind behind the Frick & Lindsay building is W.G. Wilkens. Not much is known about this architectural firm except that it designed The Warhol to emulate the composition and design of Beaux Arts architecture.

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You can meet Warhol's stuffed Great Dane, Cecil.

Back in 2008, The Andy Warhol Museum held a special exhibition entitled "Canis Major: Warhol's Dogs and Cats (and other party animals)," to pay homage to the artist's favorite animals, which Warhol documented and captured in photographs and prints. The exhibition spotlighted Warhol's collection of taxidermied creatures, including Cecil the Great Dane, who is said to have stood by and guarded Warhol's studio from 1969 to 1987.

Apparently, sometime in the 1960s, Warhol purchased Cecil, who had been dead since 1930, for $300, believing the dog had belonged to Cecil B. deMille.

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The museum contains all of the secrets to becoming Andy Warhol.

Well, sort of. The museum's extensive archive includes press clippings, Warhol's art supplies and source materials, a full run of Interview magazine, diaries, recordings of conversations between Warhol and his associates, and more.

These materials are available to the public by appointment.

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Warhol was a hoarder, and the museum has 608 Times Capsules as proof.

The bulk of the museum's archives comes from Warhol's Time Capsules, containing material and memorabilia from the artist's daily life. Warhol started this project in 1972, filling up and sending away boxes of all the material he had encountered throughout his life. After acquiring an overwhelming amount of photographs, newspapers, magazines, fan letters, and source images, Warhol would toss all of the trinkets and collectibles into a cardboard box next to his desk day after day.

You can even check out what's inside Time Capsule 21 on the museum's online exhibition.

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Famous artists like Salvador Dali often presented Warhol with gifts, which he kept in his Time Capsules.

Salvador Dali once gifted Warhol a bag full of his used paint palettes, which you can find in one of Warhol's many Time Capsules along with other quirky gifts from famous artists.

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There's a grand stairway.

There is a grand stairway at the southern end of the museum, lighted by a wide window which extends the entire length of the building. Visitors are encouraged to ride the elevator to the top floor and walk down from there.

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The two street facades are covered in terra-cotta.

Like many buildings in Pittsburgh, the museum's two street facades are coated in cream-colored glazed terra-cotta.

Terra-cotta was a popular surface embellishment at the turn of the century because of its decorative beauty and self-cleaning properties. Basically, terra-cotta has a layer of protective film which keeps its pores from absorbing water and dust. Because of the layer of film, rainwater easily washes away any dust on the surface.

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The furniture is on point.

Although the museum's design is a combined effort of the building's architects Wilkens and Gluckman, not all of furniture in the museum was custom-made. To embody Warhol's notion of museums being like department stores, The Warhol has mixed in classic chairs and tables with Gluckman's built-in furnishings.

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The film and video collection contains 200 of Warhol's Screen Tests.

From 1964 to 1966, Warhol asked his famous artist friends and celebrities, as well as anonymous people to pose as the subjects for nearly 500 of his Screen Tests. The subjects were told to sit motionless for about three minutes during filming. Warhol projected the Screen Tests in slow motion, thereby lengthening the film's duration and creating a whimsical and dreamlike film.

Today, museum visitors can create their own Screen Tests in a studio similar to Warhol's Silver Factory. The room is set up a specialized vintage camera. After the filming is complete, the videos are uploaded onto the Internet to be viewed and shared.

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