On Black Friday of last year we launched a new project for The Warhol: a store within a store, featuring curated artist goods. It’s one half of a project we’re calling Exposures. The other half being the large windows facing Sandusky Street. The windows take their inspiration from a Warhol painting of the living room of the Warhola family home on Dawson Street and were done by Daniel Pillis, an MFA student at Carnegie Mellon University (see his blog post).
Both halves of the project take the idea of domesticity as their starting points. Working with assistant curator Jessica Beck, we selected objects that represent home and hearth of a bygone era. We kept coming back to utilitarian ceramic objects, much like the cookie jars and Fiestaware that Warhol collected, and to the warmth of tea and cookies around the kitchen table, but expanded on that in a rather Warholian, maybe even uncomfortable, way.
The first iteration features local and international goods.
Redraven studios produces beautiful porcelain pieces inspired by the sentimental value of objects, dinnerware with impressions of national parks, and home décor with the geometry of crystal formations.
Pittsburgh-based artist Alexi Morrissey’s most recent project Have You Seen Me?, a series of milk bottles, blends the tradition of missing persons ads on milk cartons with the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Kara Walker, best known for her room-size installations of silhouettes, worked with the French porcelain manufacturer Bernardaud to produce a limited edition pitcher, Untitled.
Think of this as an extended trunk show or an artist studio visit brought into the museum. Further iterations of Exposures will continue to incorporate local, regional, and international artists while mixing art with utility, high-brow and low. Themes for future projects will use the temporary exhibition program as inspiration, and we intend to incorporate an element of surprise in the programming too!
But, rather than reading about Exposures, it’s best to experience it in person. The goods are available during museum hours, and the windows are viewable 24/7, until March 1, 2015.