Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids
Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids
Nasher Museum of Art
November 12, 2009 – February 21, 2010
“Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids” provides insight into the artist who sought to capture the world like a camera. The exhibition includes about 250 Polaroids and 70 silver gelatin black-and-white prints taken by Warhol from 1970 to 1987, many of them on public view for the first time.
“Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids” reveals an important dimension of Warhol’s process in creating his famous large-scale portraits. Although his Polaroids served as aids for painting portraits, in and of themselves they are significant works and represent a relatively unknown body of Warhol’s work. At the Nasher Museum, the exhibition includes his portraits of Patsy, Andrea, Joan and Nancy Nasher, accompanied by the original Polaroid studies. A selection of Warhol films from the 1960s will also be part of the exhibition, to help provide greater context for the photographic work.
“Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids” is organized by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University; the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. All three institutions received gifts of about 100 original Polaroid photographs and 50 gelatin silver black-and-white prints in 2008 from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in celebration of the foundation’s 20th anniversary.
At the Nasher Museum, major support for the exhibition is provided by McKinney.
The exhibition opens at the Nasher Museum (November 12, 2009 – February 21, 2010) and travels to the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (June 6 – September 19, 2010), and the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (October 2, 2010 – January 2, 2011).