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JESSE: Hi, my name is Jesse Kowalski and I'm the Director of Exhibitions here at The Andy Warhol Museum and I'm standing
here with the BMW Art Car that Warhol painted in 1979. This BMW is a series of art cars that BMW commissioned by
contemporary artists, starting with Alexander Calder in 1975, other artists included a Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg,
Frank Stella, and most recently Jeff Koons in 2010.
The art car that Warhol painted was painted in about 23 minutes – it was the first art car that was painted by the artist.
– the others sort of had plans sent ahead of time – so Warhol painted this in about 20 minutes and it raced in the Le Mans Auto
Race and finished sixth overall and second in its class. The car is here in conjunction with an exhibition we have organized by
The Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, New Jersey, titled 'Warhol and Cars: American Icons'. It's on display here until May 13.
The exhibition details Warhol's love of the automobile from a drawing when he was with his brother Paul here in Pittsburgh
on a produce truck from the 1940s, through the 1980s.
Getting the car in the building was a little bit of a challenge. We had it arrive on a semi truck and then it had to be transported onto
a flatbed truck so that it could be backed up to the side window of our entrance gallery.
(sounds of trucks backing up)
ERIN: Hi, I'm Erin Beveridge, I'm an art handler here at The Andy Warhol Museum, talking about Andy Warhol's art car.
We brought this in through the window, actually, which is a big logistic problem for us because we usually don't have to take out
a whole window to bring a piece of artwork in here but it was so large that we had to.
As you can see there is a front piece on here that was also art, it's painted as well, so we had to make sure that it did not
hit the ground and crack because it's also fiberglass. So when we were getting it out of one trailer to put it onto the flatbed we
had to do it very slowly, and people had to be there on all sides to make sure it didn't even touch – even just a little bit. A little scrape
could totally take off a piece of paint on this. We had to treat this as an art piece just like we would do with any other painting
or anything else that we bring in here. We had to wear gloves, and you don't really think about a car being an art piece – you know
you go up and touch your own car, but with Andy Warhol's car we had to be very careful not to scratch or use anything abrasive on
there, so gloves were used. We couldn't actually touch the body of the car since it was fiberglass and it could crack the paint because
it gives a little bit. The tires were counted as the art piece as well so we had to make sure they weren't touching anything abrasive
as well. That was a huge logistic problem with us too, thinking, 'It's a car, but it's art', and we had to figure out the difference between
touching our regular cars and touching Andy Warhol's Art Car.
So when we brought this in, we had to actually parallel park this just like a regular car. One man was steering and everybody
else was either pushing or moving the tires manually. So we had to think about 'well, we need to back this way, and back it that
way, and back it into this space', just like a normal parking space.
JESSE: Come see Warhol's BMW M-1 Art Car on display here until April 30 as part of the 'Warhol and Cars: American Icons'
exhibit, which will be on display until May 13.