On October 3, 2000, "Andy Warhol: His Art and Life (1928-1987)," opened to much acclaim at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. The exhibit was developed for the Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs by The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

The exhibit is the first Warhol show in Russia, and the first one-man show of a post-war artist to be exhibited at the Hermitage. The opening attracted more than 80 journalists from St. Petersburg, Moscow and beyond and nearly 300 people crammed into the hallways leading to the entrance of the exhibit. A rock band recruited by local artist Sergei Bugaev ("Africa") 'warmed up' the crowd, which included many young people who knew far more about the artist than their elders. The halls buzzed both literally and figuratively. People were squeezed by the crowd into the exhibit security ropes, regularly setting off the alarm system.

U.S. Ambassador James Collins, Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovskiy, and Director of The Warhol Museum Thomas Sokolowski delivered brief remarks at the opening against the backdrop of the large Warhol self-portrait -- the show's signature image -- and the Warhol BMW "Art Car" that was hand-painted by the artist himself in the early 1980s and was brought to St. Petersburg with the help of the BMW Corporation and the Guggenheim Museum. Thomas Sokolowski said, "Andy Warhol is the consummate embodiment of the American Dream, an individual who, combining genius with sheer hard work, became the single most important cultural figure in the second half of the twentieth century. He was the true mirror of his times."

Russian rock-and-roll legend Boris Grebenshikov stepped up to the microphone and noted that he had known the artist who gave him a "Campbell's Soup can" in the late 1970s when his band 'Akvarium' defied official tastes in Leningrad and the Soviet Union as a whole. When Grenshikov's bow to the crowd brought the speeches to a close, the Ambassador and Piotrovskiy proceeded to the ribbon cutting.

The Warhol show's sixty-plus pictures are exhibited in five contiguous rooms in a section of the Winter Palace dedicated to the Hermitage's archeological treasures. The exhibit venue was chosen to display a show featuring America's premier painter. The Andy Warhol Museum's works have become the center of a true "cultural event" which has left its mark on the Russian cultural world. Sokolowski added, "Andy would have loved to see his art works hanging in one of the world's greatest art museum. In a sense, although posthumous, this exhibition at the Hermitage marks the pinnacle of Warhol's success, a success that far outlasted the proverbial 15 minutes of fame about which he spoke!"

The tour schedule is below. The exhibit will continue to travel well beyond St. Petersburg, under the auspices of the U.S. embassy in each country.

Museum and Location	Dates
Museum of Arts (Almaty, Kazakhstan)	Jan. 8 - Feb. 20
Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius, Lithuania)	Feb. 28 - April 4
Center for Contemporary Arts (Kiev, Ukraine)	April 25 - May 30
Lugwig Museum Budapest - Museum of Contemporary Art (Budapest, Hungry)	June 20 - July 25
Macedonia Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki, Greece)	Aug. 15 - Sept. 19
The State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia)	Oct. 3 - Nov. 28
Rotermanni Centre for Contemporary Art (Tallinn, Estonia)	Dec. 12 - Jan. 23, 2001
Slovak National Gallery (Bratislava, Slovakia)	Feb. 6 - Mar. 20, 2001
State Art Museum (Riga, Latvia)	April 3 - May 8, 2001
Pushkin State Museum of Art (Moscow, Russia)	May 22 - July 3, 2001
Yapi Kredi Cultural Center (Istanbul, Turkey)	July 17 - Aug. 28, 2001
Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb, Croatia)	Sept. 11 - Oct. 23, 2001
Moderna Galerija (Ijubljana, Slovenia)	Nov. 6 - Dec. 18, 2001

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Culture and Diplomacy Conference | Educational and Cultural Affairs | Department of State