ArtsWatch

La Salle University Art Museum has received 150 photographs by Andy Warhol from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has 151 new Warhol Polaroids and prints on the way, including portraits of Pia Zadora, Martha Graham, Wayne Gretzky and Keith Haring. Other gifts went to Dickinson, Lafayette, Saint Joseph's University and Penn State - all together, 11 Pennsylvania school galleries now have new Warhols to study and display.
The Warhol foundation, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, announced the donation several months ago of 28,543 original Warhol photographs to 183 U.S. college and university art museums, and those gifts are now reaching their recipients.
The entire gifted collection, the foundation says, is valued at more than $28 million.
The La Salle Warhols are original Polaroid and silver gelatin prints taken by the pop artist between 1971 and 1985, including this catch of Sylvester Stallone, portraits of Carolina Herrera and Cheryl Tiegs, cityscapes, landscapes and other figural compositions. PAFA is still awaiting its acquisition.
Among the other institutional beneficiaries of the Warhol Foundation's largess are the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran, Cranbrook Art Museum, Harvard, Princeton and Williams College.
Like so much else Warhol produced, the photos have a frank, voyeuristic quality to them. You can get a good taste of the entire collection in the Warhol Foundation's report on the project, but anyone uncomfortable with a little nudity (not to mention kitsch) probably won't want to click on this link.