Andy Warhol's Ethnicity and the Other Warhol Exhibition

The exhibition Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again at the Whitney Museum of American Art had been open for more than three months when I went to see it; yet there was a line outside the building to get to the line inside the building, and the museum was at capacity. Showcasing more than 350 works of art, many assembled for the first time, the exhibition was organized by Donna De Salvo, Deputy Director for International Initiatives and Senior Curator, with Christie Mitchell, senior curatorial assistant, and Mark Loiacono, curatorial research associate. The show has been reviewed and lauded so many times that there seems to be little room left for original praise. 

While Warhol's art has been uninterruptedly present worldwide since its creation, Warhol's ethnicity remains either puzzling or an afterthought to many. It is known that the artist was of East European origin, and on the main floor of the Whitney exhibition, Warhol is described as a child of Byzantine Catholic Czechoslovakian parents. In principle, this statement is correct as Warhol's parents did originate from Czechoslovakia and were Byzantine Catholic. It does not, however, share Warhol's ethnicity (there was no Czechoslovakian ethnicity).  

In 1989, David Bourdon noted that the artist's parents "came from the farming families in Miková, a Carpatho-Rusyn mountain village in the Prešov Region of northeastern Slovakia" (Warhol, p. 14). They were members of this small ethnic group inhabiting borderlands of Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

However, because of the country of his parents' origin, Warhol sometimes has been described in ethnic terms as being either of Czech or Slovak background. Others have him as being of Ukrainian, Hungarian, or Polish background.

The artist himself is largely responsible for the confusion. He once summarized his stance on his own background as follows: "I’d prefer to remain a mystery. I never like to give my background and, anyway, I make it all up different every time I’m asked.” (Kenneth Goldsmith, I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, p. 87)

The Ukrainian claim on Warhol was recently put forth at another Warhol exhibition, Andy Warhol: Endangered Species, at the Ukrainian Museum in New York City. This exhibition's main attraction were 10 silkscreens in the Endangered Species series from 1983: Bighorn Ram, Black Rhinoceros, Grevy's Zebra, Orangutan, San Francisco Silverspot, African Elephant, Bald Eagle, Siberian Tiger, Pine Barrens Tree Frog, and Giant Panda, as well as the silkscreen Sea Turtle (1985). These came by loan from the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The exhibition also featured a section dedicated to Warhol's early years growing up in Pittsburgh. In conjunction with the exhibition, a couple of events took place, including a roundtable discussion, Andy Warhol: His Art and His Ethnic Roots. The discussion was opened by Alexander J. Motyl, Professor of Political Science at Rutgers-Newark, who reiterated his previously published opinion that Warhol belongs to both Ukrainian and Carpatho-Rusyn cultures. Paul Robert Magocsi, Professor of History, and John Yaremko, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, at the University of Toronto (and the leading scholar on Carpatho-Rusyns) opposed Professor Motyl's view, arguing that the claiming of Warhol by the Ukrainians has no factual support.

Elaine Rusinko, Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, who has written on Warhol in the context of his Carpatho-Rusyn background, spoke about Warhol's mother and her impact on the artist. Adam Harris, Ph.D., Joffa Kerr Chief Curator of Art at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, spoke mainly about his museum and the Endangered Species series.  

The exhibition at The Ukrainian Museum was co-curated by Alexander Motyl; Jaroslaw Leshko, Professor Emeritus of Art at Smith College in Northampton, MA; and Adam Harris. Andy Warhol's nephew, James Warhola, an artist, and a writer and book illustrator, was a special contributor to the displays in the exhibition.