Page 15 - Annual Review 2008

* Robert Forsterand friends played
Velvet Undergroundsongs
REwARdS / 15
The Children’s Art Centre offered a specially developed
program of interactive activities and, for 11 days in
January, it presented the Andy Warhol Summer Festival.
During the exhibition, the Gallery introduced a successful
Friday night Up Late series, with international, Australian
and local live music, talks, films and entry to the exhibition.
Principal Partners were Santos Ltd and Queensland Events Corporation.
The ‘Andy Warhol’ exhibition was organised by the Queensland
Art Gallery and The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie
Museums of Pittsburgh. Funding for insurance was provided through the
Queensland Government Exhibition Indemnity Scheme, administered by
Arts Queensland.
Left: Visitors in GoMA’s Long Gallery, viewing works that Andy Warhol made for television.
Inset: Andy, the character who featured in Pop mag, the children’s activity booklet created
for young visitors to the exhibition and to the Silver Factory: Andy Warhol for Kids.
Above left: Children and families enjoying a hula hoop activity as part of the Andy Warhol
Summer Festival, January 2008. Photograph: Natasha Harth
Above right: Staff installing Andy Warhol’s Raphael Madonna - $6.99 1985.
Australia’s first major Andy Warhol retrospective was
exclusive to Brisbane. Spectacularly presented, the
exhibition attracted 232 389 visitors — a record for
a paid exhibition at the Gallery.
More than 300 works were included — paintings,
drawings, prints, photographs, films, videos and
installations — dating from the 1950s until just before
Warhol’s death in 1987. Along with iconic images
and celebrity portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Jackie
Onassis, Mao Zedong and Elvis Presley, the exhibition
included early commercial works, Campbell’s soup
can images, important ‘Death in America’ works,
Interview magazine, late-career abstract paintings,
and an installation within the Children’s Art Centre of
Warhol’s hypnotic Silver Clouds 1966. The Australian
Cinémathèque presented one of the largest surveys
of Warhol’s film work ever compiled, with 51 restored
films and 279 Screen Tests loaned by the Museum of
Modern Art (MoMA), New York. A dedicated screening
room integrated some of Warhol’s best known films of
the 1960s within the main exhibition galleries.
Opening weekend events included performances of
Velvet Underground songs by acclaimed Australian
singer–songwriter Robert Forster and an exhibition
symposium with keynote speaker Tom Sokolowski,
Director, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.