Warhol's Time Capsules

 

Andy Warhol would have turned 80 on Wednesday. Here's something you may not know about him. During the last thirteen years of his life (1974-1987), Warhol kept a cardboard box by his desk at all times. That's where he would toss all the ephemera that passed by his desk—the photographs, newspaper clippings, fan letters, business and personal correspondence, source images for artwork, telephone messages, and anything else that might clutter up the desk of one of the world's most famous artists. When a box got full, he sealed it up, labeled it, and sent it to storage. Today, 610 of these cardboard boxes are housed in the archives of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Amazingly, more than 450 boxes have yet to be unsealed. Warhol came to see his time capsules as a form of conceptual artwork, capturing the mundane details of his life and the culture around him in standard size cardboard boxes. The oddest finds so far? A pizza, a slice of birthday cake, and a 2,000 year old mummified foot.
    You can read more about this amazing treasure trove of ephemera right here.

Via Ephemera.

Comments

[Scarlet]

Oh to be a person interesting enough to have a 2,000 year old mummified foot in storage.

[Chumworth]

i was just at the warhol museum and saw the researchers cataloging the contents of one of the boxes...

great place. very interesting.

[Jen Montgomery]

I never knew.