Upcoming Events

Mike Venezia, Children’s Illustrator and Artist – “Meet-and-Greet”

Mike Venezia, author and illustrator of over 150 books in the Getting to Know The World’s Greatest Artist series, will be in the Children’s Pop Art Print Factory to greet visitors, sign autographs, and show children how to make Warhol-style Pop art!

*FREE with purchase exhibition ticket for September 9. 

David Ouellette, Art Faculty – “Vanishing Species: Art and Biodiversity since Warhol”

In 1983, Andy Warhol was commissioned to produce a series of 10 dynamic, multicolor prints of endangered animals to mark the ten year anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. Today, the destruction of habitat and loss of biodiversity remain the greatest challenges facing the planet and its many inhabitants, both human and nonhuman. In this talk, Associate Professor of Art History David Ouellette discusses Warhol’s lifelong love of animals, the development of the Endangered Species portfolio, and the history of these 10 species since 1983. 

College of DuPage Faculty Lecture – “Who was Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol”

Learn about Valerie Solanas, the controversial author who shot Andy Warhol, through various representations of Solanas in popular culture, including in the novel Valerie by Sara Stridsberg, the film I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), and the song “I Believe” by Lou Reed. 

Film Chair Professor Brian Brems and Creative Writing Certificate Chair Trina Sotirakopulos will run this exciting lecture and discussion. 

Julia diLiberti, Humanities Faculty – “Soup Can Can’t: Warhol and the Unraveling of Art”

In this accessible introduction to Andy Warhol and his body of work, we discuss if a soup can can or can’t dismantle all the conventions of art in one fell reproduction. Our exploration will begin with works by Marcel Duchamp, noting the ways Duchamp’s work paved the way for Warhol’s. We will then look at women artists who were creating Pop Art contemporaneously with Warhol and discuss why they did not rise to the same level of fame as Warhol. Setting Warhol’s art in context may help us draw some canny conclusions about what a soup can can or can’t do. 

Justin Witte, Curator Talk – “Andy Warhol: The Ultimate Outsider”

Witte will discuss how Andy Warhol’s experience as an outsider propelled him to become one of the most famous American artists to have lived. This talk will focus on his early work as an illustrator through his later work that has undergone major critical reevaluation. Witte is the Curator of the Cleve Carney Museum of Art. He was the former exhibition manager at Columbia College Chicago and has worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. 

Thomas Kiedrowski – “Andy Warhol’s New York City”

Thomas Kiedrowski, author of Andy Warhol’s New York City, will engage in a lively conversation regarding Andy Warhol’s fascinating life and monumental career centered around The Big Apple. From his first steps in Manhattan, to becoming the Pope of Pop Art, hear about Warhol’s artistic pursuits drawn from first-hand accounts and years of research Kiedrowski gathered over the last decade. Let Thomas take you through a journey to find out how Andy Warhol helped to build up the mystique around the city that never sleeps. Moderated by Diana Martinez, Director, McAninch Arts Center. 

Kiedrowski, has led tours to Warhol-centric locations in Manhattan for over a decade. He describes himself as a researcher, and concentrates his focus on marginalized persons in postwar America. Born in the Midwest, Thomas earned his Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the Pratt Institute and calls New York home. 

*Lectures are free to anyone who has purchased a ticket to the Warhol Exhibition. Please provide ticket stub or order confirmation for free entrance. Reservations required. Restrictions apply. 

Jessica Beck – “Politics and Friendship in Warhol and Basquiat’s Collaborations”

Reading an excerpt from her essay, The Personal and Political in Basquiat and Warhol’s Ten Punching Bags, for the Basquiat x Warhol. Painting Four Hands, at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Jessica Beck will speak about the collaborations that Warhol and Basquiat created in the 1980s. While the two artists are often discussed according to their differences, Beck will demonstrate just how much they shared— friendship, a mutual interest in anatomy, language, and an engagement with the political climate of the 1980s. Their partnership impacted both of their careers, but through a close examination of the details of their paintings and sculptures, we can see that it was Basquiat who possessed the most influence and helped reinvigorate Warhol’s late career. 

Jessica Beck, a director at Gagosian Beverly Hills, is a curator, Warhol scholar, art historian, writer, and lecturer. Formerly chief curator of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, she organized numerous exhibitions of Warhol’s work there, including Andy Warhol: My Perfect Body (2016–17) and Marisol and Warhol Take New York (2021–22). Beck has published widely on Warhol, including for the catalogue published to accompany the exhibition Basquiat × Warhol: Painting Four Hands at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2023), and was a featured expert in the Netflix documentary series The Andy Warhol Diaries (2022).

*Lectures are free to anyone who has purchased a ticket to the Warhol Exhibition. Please provide ticket stub or order confirmation for free entrance. Reservations required. Restrictions apply. 

Eric Shiner – “The American Dream”

Eric Shiner will give insight into who Andy Warhol really was, from humble beginnings as a first-generation immigrant to superstar icon. Over the course of a prominent and prolific career, Andy Warhol practiced his religious faith which has been largely excluded in historic accounts. Warhol also faced challenges as a gay man and a believing Christian whose identity in American society was made complicated. 

Shiner, a fixture in the art world for several decades, served as director of The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh from 2010 to 2016, and as a curator there beginning in 2008. Shiner has curated dozens of contemporary art exhibitions in cities around the globe and was the team leader on The Warhol Museum’s major Warhol retrospective that traveled to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo between 2012 and 2014. Following that, he was a senior vice president at Sotheby’s until 2018, where he worked in private sales. He holds two Art History Master’s degrees from Osaka University and Yale. 

*Lectures are free to anyone who has purchased a ticket to the Warhol Exhibition. Please provide ticket stub or order confirmation for free entrance. Reservations required. Restrictions apply. 

Blake Gopnik – “Andy Warhol: What Makes Him a Great Artist”

Blake Gopnik conducted extensive research to create an in-depth look into Andy Warhol from historical to social to artistic perspectives. Gopnik gives us the clearest documentation to date of a mysterious man and an artist who constantly avoided definition, and whose work continues to impact our art and culture today. Blake Gopnik is the author of Warhol, the definitive biography of the Pop Art artist. He has been the staff critic at the Globe and Mail, the Washington Post and Newsweek, and critic-at-large for ArtInfo and Artnet News. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times and posts his Friday Pic on his website blakegopnik.com and his Warhol findings at Warholiana.com. He holds a PhD in Art History from Oxford University. 

*Lectures are free to anyone who has purchased a ticket to the Warhol Exhibition. Please provide ticket stub or order confirmation for free entrance. Reservations required. Restrictions apply.