Warhol Live, a comprehensive exhibition that examines Warhol’s work through the lens of music and the performing arts, will be on view at The Warhol from June 14 to September 13, 2009, and features over 640 works and objects including paintings, silkscreens, photographs, works on paper, illustrations, films, videos, album covers, and ephemera from Warhol’s personal archives.  Organized by The Warhol in partnership with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition seeks to interpret the role music played in Andy Warhol’s life, as well as the influence that Warhol had on the music scene.  Through an extensive period-by-period examination of Warhol’s life and work, Warhol Live offers viewers a glimpse into Warhol as producer, filmmaker, interviewer, publicist, glam rocker, and celebrity night-clubber. After traveling to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the de Young Museum in San Francisco, Warhol Live finishes its national tour in Pittsburgh.

Image: Debbie Harry, Rockbird, 1986, Reproduced by permission of Universal Music Group

Conrad Ventur: Fragments of Fame
June 14 – Sept. 13, 2009

This exhibition presents three installations by Conrad Ventur. The Glamorous Marlene Dietrich performs..., features mirror ball projected reflections of Marlene Dietrich performing Pete Seger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone?. The Dietrich video footage utilized in this work was originally filmed in 1972 in London. The Late Marilyn (2009) features footage of Marilyn Monroe’s iconic “Happy Birthday” tribute to John F. Kennedy projected through a rotating crystal pendant. Billy Name, Screen Test 1 (2009), is Ventur’s contemporary reworking of Warhol’s Screen Test film series [1964-66], featuring Billy Name, a prominent member of the Factory.

Conrad Ventur currently lives and works in New York and London. He received his BFA in Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology (1999) and his MFA in Art Practice, with Distinction, from Goldsmiths College, London (2008). He has exhibited at: The Louis Blouin Institute, London; Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam; Architecture Annual, Bucharest; Somerset House, London; Stockholm Konsthall, Sweden; and Kunstverein Munchen Goethe Institute, New York, among other international solo and group presentations. In 2004 Ventur launched an extension to his practice, the contemporary art magazine USELESS, and has since lectured on independent publishing at the Hayward Gallery, London and Art Basel, Switzerland. 

Image: Conrad Ventur, The Glamorous Marlene Dietrich performs Pete Seger's Where Have all the Flowers Gone? (video stills), 2008

Pinball Wizard
June 14 – August 9, 2009

This exhibition showcases 10 restored, musically themed pinball machines on loan from the Pro-Am Pinball Association's collection (PAPA).  Machines represented in the exhibition are Sound Stage, Guns N’ Roses, Kiss, The Who’s Tommy, Captain Fantastic, Disco Fever, Swinger, Faces, Shindig and Mini-Zag. Visitors to the Museum’s entrance gallery are encouraged to play these machines.  In addition to the 10 vintage machines, PAPA has commissioned two Pittsburgh artists, Brian Holderman and Mike Budai, to create one of a kind art works from vintage machines in their collection.  These two one-of-a-kind machines will be unveiled at The Warhol during the run of the exhibition.  All these machines, along with hundreds of others from the collection will be part of PAPA 12, The World Pinball Championship.  The competition is open to spectators and offers six divisions of competitive play and prize monies to competitors from around the world. The competition is August 13 -16, 2009, in Carnegie, PA.  Visit www.PAPA.org for details.

Image: Capt. Fantastic (detail), on loan from the Pro-Am Pinball Association's collection. Image courtesy of Brian Holderman.