The Archives of The Andy Warhol Museum is maintained for the general public and scholars and is the primary resource on the artist and the period during which he worked. It is both an exhibition space and a place for study.

The archives are a part of the artist's life work and the greatest single collection of ephemera documenting the diverse worlds in which Warhol was active. The collection currently consists of over 8,000 cubic feet of material, and functions as an integral part of the Andy Warhol Museum, along with his paintings, films, video work, sculpture and graphic art. The collection includes scrapbooks of press clippings related to Warhol's work and his private and public life; art supplies and materials used by Warhol; posters publicizing his exhibitions and films; over 4,000 audio tapes featuring interviews and conversations between Warhol and his friends and associates; thousands of documentary photographs; an entire run of Interview magazine, which Warhol founded in 1969; his extensive library of books and periodicals; hundreds of decorative art objects; many personal items such as clothing and over thirty of the silver-white wigs that became one of Warhol's defining physical features.

The highlight of the archives collection is Warhol's Time Capsules. This serial work, spanning a thirty-year period from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, consists of 610 standard sized cardboard boxes, which Warhol, beginning in 1974, filled, sealed and sent to storage. Warhol used these boxes to manage the bewildering quantity of material that routinely passed through his life. Photographs, newspapers and magazines, fan letters, business and personal correspondence, art work, source images for art-work, books, exhibition catalogues, and telephone messages, along with objects and countless examples of ephemera, such as announcements for poetry readings and dinner invitations, were placed on an almost daily basis into a box kept conveniently next to his desk

The Archives staff is currently engaged in arranging, describing, creating, finding aids for this primary research material. The Archives Study Center is open to researchers by appointment. The Center also has a small library, which is presently closed to visitors. To arrange a research appointment, please contact us by writing the Archives Study Center at The Andy Warhol Museum.