Warhol Museum Receives Bank of America Art Conservation Grant

Writing in the New York Times in 2010, Roberta Smith described Andy Warhol’s Oxidation series of paintings as “ravishing.” Smith specifically cited their “amazing fluorescences of golds, greens and blacks in a range of splatters and puddles that evoke Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings” — while also pointing to these works’ ability to show a different side of Warhol. Preserving these unique works — the creation of which involved urine — is no easy task for the institutions with them in their collection.

Now, at least one will have an easier job of it. Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum is one of 23 cultural spaces that received a grant from Bank of America with conservation in mind. This year’s Art Conservation Project grant recipients are global in scope, with a host of styles and artists represented.

As The Art Newspaper points out, Warhol isn’t the only 20th century American artist represented in the grant recipients. Chris Burden’s installation Urban Light, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, also received grant money for its upkeep, including protective paint.

The other museums and works singled out for grants are wildly disparate, including everything from 946 objects spanning thousands of years at the Hong Kong Palace Museum to London’s National Gallery for conservation of Peter Paul Rubens’s painting The Judgment of Paris. Two portraits at the Louis Armstrong House Museum and Archives also received one of this year’s grants.

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As The Art Newspaper notes, Bank of America has been awarding these grants for the last 13 years. Looking over this year’s list of recipients provides a fascinating overview of art from around the world — and reveals the challenges of keeping notable art around for future generations.