Exhibition Overview

Warhol and the West is the first museum exhibition to fully explore Andy Warhol’s love of the West represented in his art, movies, attire, travel and collecting. Developed in a partnership with The Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Ga. and the Tacoma Art Museum, Warhol and the West presents the full range of Western imagery Warhol produced. New scholarship examines how Warhol’s Western work merges the artist’s portrayal of celebrities with his interest in cowboys, American Indians and other western motifs. His work in the Western genre is immediately recognizable, impressive, daring, inspirational and sometimes confrontational. This body of work furthers our understanding of how the American West infiltrates the public’s imagination through contemporary art and popular culture.

Funding for this exhibition and related programs is provided in part by Oklahoma Humanities (OH) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed do not necessarily reflect those of OH or NEH.

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Exhibition Elements

Exhibition Elements

Drawn to the lore and lure of the West throughout his life, Warhol’s lifelong fascination culminated with his 1986 series Cowboys and Indians, a print portfolio that represents an important milestone in the artist’s late career and a shift in the conception of contemporary Western American art. The portfolio includes images of 14 iconic Western subjects such as Custer, Geronimo and John Wayne.

One of the last major projects completed prior to his death, Cowboys and Indians received very little critical or public attention at the time of its release and remains one of the most understudied aspects of Warhol’s career. This group of images has been exhibited at many museums, but never in the full context of Warhol’s continued involvement with Western people, places and things. In addition to the prints produced for the portfolio, this exhibition includes 3
prints created that were not included in the final production, source images, items collected by Warhol, as well as personal memorabilia.