50 years later, Warhol work revived

NEW YORK - Even for a 1964 New York World’s Fair that celebrated “The World of Tomorrow,” Andy Warhol may have been ahead of his time.

His monumental piece commissioned specifically for the fair - a mural depicting mug shots of the New York Police Department’s 13 most-wanted criminals - was deemed too edgy for the family-friendly event and was painted over just before opening day. Now, 50 years later, the work is the focus of a museum exhibition being staged on the very fairgrounds where the pop-art provocateur was censored.

“There’s no question Warhol was not interested in the notion of a family-friendly fair,” said Larissa Harris, the exhibition’s curator. “It’s possible that he understood the concept very clearly, but he did this absolutely intentionally.”

The exhibition, “13 Most Wanted Men: Andy Warhol and the 1964 World’s Fair,” opens on Sunday at the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. It includes never-before-shown archival documents and materials, including the artist’s letter agreeing to the paint-over and the NYPD mug shot booklet.

Warhol was one of 10 artists commissioned by architect Philip Johnson to create 20-foot-by-20-foot artworks for the outside of the New York State Pavilion’s Circarama theater.

Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who was seeking the Republican presidential nomination at the time, gave the order to paint over Warhol’s mural. The stated reason, according to Johnson and others, was because seven of the 13 criminals were Italians and he didn’t want to risk alienating his Italian constituencies, Harris said.

“It does seem like an incredibly bold step,” said Nicholas Chambers, a curator at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which is collaborating on the exhibition. “In retrospect, it seems that was the only possible outcome - that it had to be censored.”

AP