FUNKY MUSEUMS CAN BE BARRIER-FREE
By Steve Wright and Heidi Johnson-Wright
The Andy Warhol Museum shines its funky light on Steeltown.
The museum is in a rehabbed building that sits among a gritty, rundown row of buildings on the Allegheny River. A gentle, retrofitted ramp at the entrance provides easy access.
Exhibition spaces are spread out and open, making for easy maneuvering of a wheelchair. The centrally-located elevators make those who need them feel like part of the action instead of second-class citizens relegated to some isolated freight elevator.
Museum guide sheets suggest touring the barrier-free building from the top down.
Shadows is the main attraction on the seventh floor. Created in 1978, it's a captivating series of 55 photos from a 102-piece exhibit created by Warhol.
The sixth floor records Warhol's success in the '50s as a young graphic artist.
Framed are Warhol's illustrations for Glamour and Harper's Bazaar magazines, along with ad campaigns for women's designer shoes. The sketches are stylized and whimsical with soft colors and delicate lines, a surprising side to the often less-than-subtle pop wizard.
Warhol's studio, dubbed the Silver Factory because of its spray-painted silver interior, was the center of ultra-hip New York society in the late '60s and '70s.
Silver Clouds -- a room full of giant, metallic, pillow-like balloons that float, flip and fly from gusts of several oscillating fans -- recreates the feeling of the Factory.
As you exit the elevator on each floor, you're drawn toward a "looking glass" of sorts. These vitrines -- or glass display cases -- reveal a world of elbow-rubbing with royalty, backstage romps with rock stars, and parties 'til dawn.
A case on the seventh floor -- the floor themed, "Fame, Fortune, Fashion" -- contains invitations to film premieres and soirees, and photos of Warhol with Nancy Reagan, Mick Jagger and Pope John Paul II.
The fourth floor artworks reflect a changed Warhol, a man who had come close to death at the hands of actress/Factory wannabe Valerie Solanas.
Warhol took a four-year respite from painting following the shooting in 1968. When he began to paint again, he produced oddly disturbing works such as Skulls, Rorschach ink blots and Last Suppers.
Down another level, visitors see two strikingly different sides of the artist. We see the media manipulating, publishing genius Warhol in a display of over one hundred Interview magazine covers.
Nearby is a glass case filled with mementos of the private Warhol. Included are his commencement program from a local Pittsburgh high school and a photo of a shy youth hugging the family dog, Lucy.
Works from the last decade of Warhol's life, including his experiments with a mixture of diamond dust and paint, are featured on the second floor.
The tour comes full circle back on the first floor, with a gallery of commissioned portraits, including those of artist Keith Haring, Princess Caroline and dance music diva Grace Jones. Tucked away on the first floor is the only theater in town where the main attraction is always a Warhol movie or a film made by another avant garde artist. The nearby gift shop is crammed full of books, T-shirts and other Warhol memorabilia, but is spacious enough for wheelchair users to negotiate.
An understatedly chic coffee shop with silver chairs and cow hide couches serves seasonal light meals in the basement.
This Midwestern city -- built on steel and smoke, babushkas and piroshkis -- will never be mistaken for New York City.
But the tough, blue-collar town where Andrew Warhola grew up has done an admirable job of capturing the essence of a man who saw the world in hot pinks, dazzling silvers and oozing yellows.
The Andy Warhol Museum is at 117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, PA 15212-5890. For information, call (412) 237-8300. www.warhol.org
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