Deep In the Heart of Brooklyn: On the Road III- Pittsburgh and the Andy Warhol Museum

The 7th Street Andy Warhol Bridge over the Allegheny River connects the downtown/strip area with the Northside - home of the Andy Warhol Musuem.

Andy Warhol was an extraordinarily talented and visionary artist who understood, as he was wont to say, first the business of art and later, the art of business. He was recognized worldwide as a talented artist and as an icon, perhaps an avatar, of the new art scene that exploded in the early 1960s and beyond. He understood and helped forge the concept of celebrity in his adopted city, New York. Happily, the Brooklyn Museum has continued to recognize and champion his work. But, if a prophet often has no honor except in his home town, then clearly Andy Warhol (aka Drella) in his heart was perhaps at home nowhere more so than the City of Pittsburgh where he was born and learned about art from his mother, Jula Warhola, as well as his studies at the Carnegie Institute (now Carnegie Mellon University).'

The Andy Warhol Museum is a breathtakingly exciting and deeply comprehensive venue to provide the viewer to both understand and apprecitate the talent of the man and the scope of the work, but also to help put it in the context of a man who lived in what appear to be the mutually exclusive worlds of Eastern Rite Catholicism and celebrity, sex, and urban intrigue.

The Andy Warhol Museum contains seven floors filled with Warhol's art, memorabilia and other cultural artifacts. A current show matches the work of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. The museum pulls no punches in presenting the work of its unique and talented son: there is a great deal of explicit sex and nudity on display in Andy's works throughout his productive lifetime.

A great museum for Warhol and art fans. The stroll across the Andy Warhol Bridge to the museum gives you an idea of the appreciaiton of his talent and contributions. While the city was always a cultural magneone senses that the resurgence of art and creativity in the Pittsburgh is directly linked to the possibilities that the "business of art and the art of business" can potentially bring to a community if, like the artist, it is willing to take a risk and aim for the stars.

-- Brookyln Beat