“Andy Warhol: Through a Glass Starkly” at the George Segal Gallery

153 original Andy Warhol photographs to be exhibited at the Segal Gallery from September 8 through December 12, 2009

Montclair State University’s George Segal Gallery will display 153 original photographs taken by Andy Warhol in “Andy Warhol: Through a Glass Starkly,” an exhibition that will run from September 8 through December 12, 2009. Leading Warhol scholar and author of Andy Warhol’s Serial Photography, William V. Ganis will curate the exhibition.

The photographs—103 Polaroids and 50 black-and-white gelatin silver prints—were donated to the George Segal Gallery by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts through the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program. Among the subjects in the photos are celebrities including Debbie Harry, Jamie Wyeth, Willie Shoemaker, John Travolta, Liza Minnelli, Bianca Jagger, Barry Diller, and Catherine Oxenberg.

“Though Warhol is known as a painter and printmaker, nearly all of his efforts have a photographic base,” says Ganis. “This exhibition shows Warhol’s ‘photographic thinking’ whether through the diaristic snapshots he made every day for a decade, or the Polaroids of celebrities used to make their silk-screened portraits. The works at the Segal Gallery, most of which will be shown publicly for the first time, offer a fascinating cross-section of Warhol’s abiding photographic endeavors.”

In addition to the Warhol photographs, which will become part of the Segal Gallery’s permanent collection, the exhibition will include five paintings that relate to the photographs, on loan from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and three photographs of Andy Warhol, including Anton Perich’s well-known image of Warhol carrying a camera. These photographs will be on loan from the DeNovo Gallery in Idaho.

The Andy Warhol Foundation’s Photographic Legacy Program was established to provide greater access to Warhol’s artwork and process, and to enable a wide range of people from communities across the country to view and study this important yet relatively unknown body of Warhol’s work. The Segal Gallery is one of 183 university museums and galleries nationwide, and one of just three in New Jersey, selected as a beneficiary of part of the Warhol photographic collection. All together, 28,543 original Warhol photographs are valued at more than $28 million. This unprecedented program honors the 20th anniversary of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.