July 14, 2015
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Speaker: ERIC SHINER, Director, The Andy Warhol Museum
From Andy Warhol Museum website The Andy Warhol Museum is a vital forum in which diverse audiences of artists, scholars, and the general public are galvanized through creative interaction with the art and life of Andy Warhol.
The Warhol is ever-changing, constantly redefining itself in relationship to contemporary life using its unique collections and dynamic interactive programming as tools.
From article in Tribune written by Alice Carter, April 11, 2014.
If you haven’t been to the Andy Warhol Museum recently, it’s time for a second look.
After 20 years in its North Shore home, the museum is nearing completion of a project to redesign and repurpose its galleries and public spaces with a new vision and visitor-friendly exhibits.
“The culmination of two years’ work by the Warhol team, the re-hang is built upon scholarship and exhibitions that the museum has been recognized for internationally ever since its inauguration in 1994,” says Nicholas Chambers, the Milton Fine curator of art at the museum. “It brings together painting, film, television, music, immersive installations and numerous other aspects of Warhol’s life and work — revealing the manner in which Warhol fundamentally redefined our understanding who an artist could be.”
The most significant change is a major redesign of its collection galleries, which are chronologically organized across five of the museum’s seven floors. After the new installation is completed, masterpieces of Warhol’s art from the collection, as well as archival materials, will change periodically to allow frequent visitors a wider view of items from the museum’s extensive collection.
“To keep the content fresh, the curatorial team will rotate artworks in all galleries on a frequent basis. It will be a fun experience and definitely worth a visit if you haven’t been to the museum in a while,” says Eric Shiner, director of the Andy Warhol Museum……”
About the speaker, Eric Shiner from CARNEGIE Magazine, Winter 2008 by Betsy Momich
Eric Shiner is proof that you can go home again—and even like it. After more than 10 years away, the western Pennsylvania native and Pitt graduate recently returned to his home turf for his dream job as The Andy Warhol Museum’s Milton Fine Curator of Art. Unlike the museum’s famous namesake, Shiner never lost his affection for Pittsburgh and has sung its praises all over the world, including his adopted home-away-from-home, Japan.
It was serendipity that placed Shiner in a statewide honors program for high school students in the summer of 1989, when the focus just happened to be Japan. “Something about it really spoke to me,” Shiner recounts, and a few years later, after visiting Japan during a semester at sea while a Pitt student, Shiner was hooked. His undergraduate and graduate studies would all focus on the study of Japanese art and architecture. In between, Shiner made his first stop at The Andy Warhol Museum for a memorable internship spent peering into the boxes—and, consequently, the contemporary-art genius—of the famed pop artist. He professes to have changed a lot as a person during his time at The Warhol and his six years in Japan. One experience opened his eyes to the world; the other gave him a whole new appreciation for the world of contemporary art. He’s applied lessons learned from both in an already eclectic career as a curator and lecturer—a path that, happily, has brought him home again.
Squirrel Hill Historical Society 