Appendix D: The Andy Warhol Film Project

Angell, Callie

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Appendix D: The Andy Warhol Film Project

Callie Angell

Andy Warhol Screen Tests: The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1

~The Andy Warhol Film Project has been a joint undertaking of the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., and The Andy Warhol Museum. The project originated in the early 1980s, when John G. Hanhardt, then curator and head of film and video at the Whitney, proposed an ambitious and unusually...

Author

Callie Angell

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00286.10

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22137

Appendix D: The Andy Warhol Film Project

The Andy Warhol Film Project has been a joint undertaking of the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., and The Andy Warhol Museum. The project originated in the early 1980s, when John G. Hanhardt, then curator and head of film and video at the Whitney, proposed an ambitious and unusually collaborative project in which the Whitney and MoMA would work together to preserve, restore, exhibit, distribute, and catalogue the entirety of Warhol’s cinema. With the help of Tom Armstrong, director of the Whitney, and Fred Hughes and Vincent Fremont, two of the artist’s closest colleagues, Warhol’s cooperation was enlisted. In 1984, Warhol placed his original film materials on deposit with MoMA, where initial inspections and inventories were performed.

Warhol died in 1987; in 1988 the Whitney presented The Films of Andy Warhol: An Introduction, an exhibition of vintage prints from the Warhol Film Collection that was the inaugural event of the Andy Warhol Film Project. In 1989, The Museum of Modern Art restored the first group of thirteen Warhol films, putting them into distribution in 16mm through their Circulating Film Library. In 1990, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. assumed ownership of Warhol’s estate, including all the films. In 1991 the Warhol Foundation began providing major funding both to The Museum of Modern Art for the preservation of Warhol’s cinema and to the Whitney for research on a catalogue raisonné of the films. Also in 1991, Callie Angell joined the Whitney as adjunct curator of the Andy Warhol Film Project; she also became consultant to MoMA on the preservation of the films.

In 1994, The Andy Warhol Museum opened in Pittsburgh as a joint venture of the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Dia Center for the Visual Arts, and the Carnegie Institute. Copies of the restored Warhol films were included in the Warhol Museum’s collection. In 1997 the Warhol Foundation donated all of Warhol’s film materials to The Museum of Modern Art, including the originals previously deposited at MoMA as well as the many remaining prints and originals found in storage at Warhol’s studio. At the same time, the Warhol Foundation transferred the ownership of the film rights to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Since 1991 the Whitney Museum has conducted major research for a catalogue raisonné of Warhol’s films, and has also presented a number of premiere exhibitions, including The Films of Andy Warhol: An Introduction (1988), Andy Warhol’s Video + Television (1991), The Films of Andy Warhol: Part II (1994), and Andy Warhol: Outer and Inner Space (1998).

The Museum of Modern Art has housed Warhol’s original film materials since 1984 and now owns the entire Collection, which is maintained in state-of-the-art cold storage at MoMA’s Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center near Scranton, Pennsylvania. Since 1989 MoMA has restored more than ninety hours of Warhol’s cinema, including 279 Screen Tests and fifty-three other titles; the restoration of the Warhol films by MoMA has been conducted in collaboration with both the Warhol Museum and the Whitney. The restored Warhol films are available for rental in 16mm from MoMA’s Circulating Film Library; for more information, contact circfilm@moma.org. Study prints of the Warhol films are made available to scholars at MoMA’s Celeste Bartos International Film Study Center by appointment only; for more information, contact charles_silver@moma.org.

The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh administers the rights for all the Warhol films, including copyright registrations, licensing, and reproduction fees. The Warhol Museum also holds a collection of all restored film titles, which are shown regularly in screenings at the Warhol Museum, and also made available to visiting scholars and researchers; for more information, visit http://www.warhol.org.

Prints of most of the preserved Warhol films have also been donated to the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles, where they may be accessed by film scholars; for further information, contact the Archive Research and Study Center of the UCLA Film and Television Archive at 310-206-5388.

Since 1991, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has generously supported both the restoration of the Warhol films by The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney’s research project. The Warhol Foundation also oversaw the large portion of the film collection that was initially stored at Warhol’s Factory, and it administered all the films’ rights up until the fall of 1997, when the film materials were donated to MoMA and the rights were transferred to The Andy Warhol Museum.

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