MoMA owns up to Warhol rejection letter from 1956

Culture Monster has reported on many art museums and we know firsthand just how humorless they can be. (No, we will not name names.)

So we take our hats off today to New York's Museum of Modern Art for its ability to have a chuckle at its own expense. The institution has tweeted a recent blog post featuring a rejection letter that the museum sent to Andy Warhol in 1956.

In the letter, the museum notifies Warhol that its collections committee has decided to turn down the drawing "Shoe," which the artist had offered as a gift. 

"I regret that I must report to you that the Committee decided, after careful consideration, that they ought not to accept it for our Collection," wrote the museum's Alfred H. Barr Jr.

"Let me explain that because of our severely limited gallery and storage space we must turn down many gifts offered, since we feel it is not fair to accept as a gift a work which may be shown only infrequently."

At the bottom of the correspondence is a postscript: "P.S. The drawing may be picked up from the Museum at your convenience."

Needless to say, it was an extremely poor decision in retrospect. The artwork, which the museum would have acquired for free, would probably be worth thousands of dollars today.

So how exactly did this 53-year-old letter come to circulate online? A spokeswoman for MoMA told Culture Monster today that the "letter has been out for years." 

A few phone calls reveal that the letter is part of the archives at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, according to the Andy Warhol Foundation. The letter is dated Oct. 18, 1956, and is addressed to Warhol at 242 Lexington Ave., New York. 

The correspondence has been posted on various blogs and is reproduced in the 2002 volume "Andy Warhol Pop Box: Fame, the Factory and the Father of American Pop Art," which is published by Chronicle Books and the Andy Warhol Museum.

Apparently, Twitter makes everything new again -- at least for a few minutes, which no doubt would have pleased Warhol.

-- David Ng

Image credit: The Andy Warhol Museum

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Comments

[Donald Frazell]

Sounds like they made an excellent decision. Drawing a line in the sand at souless materialism, and substance over shallow suface. Style warhol never had true style, for that reveals something inside, his are hollow.

Too bad the tide pulled the sand out from under that line, and let the flood of hype and "clever' Academic ideas flood in. Maybe we can go back, and get rid of the pop and conceptual nonsense and send it to the Whitney and "new" museum. Time for art to be about mind, body and soul again, rather than just career and the art "industry".

art collegia delenda est

[Ray-Mel Cornelius]

Art is about mind, body and soul, but it can also be about the life around us and about art, and the art industry, itself. Warhol's art was about many disparate things, the mundane, the glamorous, the shallow, the transcendent. Whether or not "Shoe" was worthy of the museum's collection at such an early date in Warhol's career, his later work, which helped change the way we look at the world (another job art is supposed to do) certainly is worthy.

[Donald Frazell]

Warhol was a glorified graphic designer, as is Shepard Fairley now. His self portrait below would be fine as an album cover, but ridiculous as something I would put on my wall. Can anyone who isnt a narcissist look at this over and over and still find something worhwhile in it? Your answer to that will say alot.

Warhol couldnt draw, had a limited color sense, no musicality to his use, no richness or movement. No musicality. It was about a small group of people in a specific time and place, that isnt creative art. It is souless. And useful only as an investment by those who it pertains to, perhaps .001 percent of the world. As this article proves, in focusing on its monetary value over its real worth. And that keeps on plumeting, as it is pop, As with the Beatles and MJ, it wil not stand the test of time. Miles and Coltrane will still be selling tens of thousnds of CDs, or their equivalents, in a hundred years.

Why? Because pop and conceptualism are temporal, not built on a common humanity. And so lifeless and bloodless. Perfect for pseudo vampires, and intellectuals.

art collegia delenda est

[Sam Pimento]

I agree wholeheartedly with Donald Frazell. Warhol's "paintings" are merely silkscreened photographs. He became prominent in the art world of the early 1960's because his work was promoted by Time and Life magazines, which were published by Henry Luce, a board member at MoMA. Warhol's "paintings" are a reflection of the materialism and commercialism of Postwar American society, but they're not Art.

[MarK]

Music of The Beatles is doing quite well so far, four decades after they created their last album. It transcends "pop" categorization because of its superior musical quality. There is ample evidence that this music will in fact "stand the test of time".

[Donald Frazell]

It is lullabies, no complex harmoni,es simplistic melodies, absolutley no rhythm, Ringo never was even recorded, worst drummer of all time, even for pop. Which is why you see him crying when interviewed and wanting to be seen as the greattest rock drummer evern. LOL!

Beatles only sell to thier own generation, kids dont give a damn, Ony songs ever recorded by serious musicians were Eleanor Rigby, and even then only by mid level jazz guys, and Blackbird by Jaco, who was an insane genius, only he could have wrung gold from that dry rag.

Kind of Blue still sells well over 30k a year even 50 years after its recording, most by younger and those from around the world. No one cares about the beatless outside of western Europe and the US. Irrelevant fluff.

[MarK]

Complexity in music does not equal quality, and neither is popularity among the "kids". In fact, quite often the opposite is true. This, by the way, applies to other arts as well.
Rhythm is not the most flamboyant part in much of Beatles' music, but it is definitely there, regardless of whether every musically uneducated listener realizes it or not. Last few centuries gave us plenty of wonderful music that does not have elaborate beats in it.
Anybody who thinks that no one cares about The Beatles "outside of western Europe and the US" has apparently not been to Japan and other parts of Eastern Asia lately.
Accurate predictions in the arts are notoriously difficult to make, but lots of musically sophisticated people can see quite clearly now that dozens of best compositions by The Beatles, most of which were created during the last five years of their collaboration, are indeed very likely to be able to stand the test of time with great success.

[claude reich]

This letter has indeed been out for years and appears in several Warhol books or recent exhibition catalogues. Nothing really new here, as is the fact that MOMA was notoriously very late in his recognition of Warhol's talent (if I am not mistaken, up to the early nineties, the permanent collection had only one work, the golden Marilyn...)

[Donald Frazell]

In Asia yes, the lands of big eyed cartoons and lost cultures. Even the leaders realize they have lost all originality, the President of Singapore decried this years ago. They have lost all visual as well as musical cultures, taken Euro "classical" musics and pop to fill in this vacuum. A few like Toshiko Akiyoshi have attempted to meld Japanese with jazz, but failed.

Go to India, and especially africa and south america. The beatless are for wimpy white boys, no one listens to Western pop or rock there. RandB and jazz are far bigger influences. Cuba and Brazil the most creative and vital musically in the world now, probably visually too.jazz has had its run here. Which is the ruly Modern music, rock just whitewashed versions of the blues, and much lesser in quality and passion. Give me all three King's any day.

And pop of the Beatless is strickly middle class white boys reliving their youth. the kids now, of all levels, dont give a damn. It will die with the boomers, as will Elvis and MJs with fat old white women.

Bird,Miles, Monk, Trane, Dolphy, and LAs Herbie Hancock, runs the jazz program at the Philharmonic, far, far, far more advanced. Though Eric Dolphy, Billy Higgins and Dexter Gordon were all born here.

No, pop is disposable. It works better in music than visually, where wimps like Warhol belong in magazine only, there are fine there, and actually look much better. As the inks are brighter and online glow some. they are weak and insipid in person. Just glorified postage stamps, collectables, not art.

art collegia delenda est

[MarK]

Repeating the same dogma not supported by knowledge (in this case, of musical kind) does not make it any more convincing or true.
The reason all of Europe and North America, taken together with eastern Asia and southern Pacific, do matter in cultural discussions is that these regions are where most countries are better developed and have freer societies than almost anywhere else on this planet, and therefore their populations have better access to all the cultural riches of the world. However, in any case, we all know that current popularity is not a reliable measurement of fine quality and/or potential longevity.
In general, i personally prefer listening to jazz rather than to whatever is called "pop". But, being well educated musically, i am able to hear high quality of music wherever it happens to appear. That is why i know that music of The Beatles - the better half of it, of course - is in fact the exception to the general rule and its superior musical quality does not need to be recognized by everyone in order to stand the test of time.

[Donald Frazell]

!!!LOL!!!

ACDE!

Note to self, sometimes, rarely, ! are quite relevant.

[MarK]

If laughing is truly the best medicine, then i must be the healthiest person in the world, considering all the LOLing i have been doing lately while reading comments written by people that have very little knowledge of and no real qualifications in the subjects they are commenting on, as well as people that naively believe that "being well educated" means having attended an educational institution of some kind. It is refreshing, being in agreement at least on that important point.

[Ray-Mel Cornelius]

Again, Warhol's work was part of a movement which stated art could be about the mundane as well as the transcendant. Some people find this an unacceptable position for art to take, blindly, and angrily, pontificating theirs is the only view that has merit. Pop made a lot of people angry, and made, and still makes, many people think about their assumptions. That is a function of art, to make us think, as well as see the world around us in a new way. Those who limit their vision limit only their own vision, no one else's.

[Donald Frazell]

No, its boring. Fine in magazines, as pop is media based and disposable, looks better in print than on the wall anyway. It doesnt make intelligent non artsy fartsy types think, except in how the hell anyone thinks its intelligent. Same with so called "avant garde" bleached boy musics, which are quite tame and limiting by creative musics standards, like those from Bird thru Ornette Coleman. Dont trust me, trust Wynton Marsalis.
ie previous "discussion"

art e musica collegia delenda est

[Ray-Mel Cornelius]

"Artsy fartsy" types? Stereotype much? You seem to have a lot invested in this.
If you don't care for certain kinds of music, visual art, lasagna or breakfast cereal, continue on, nobody cares. The rest of us who are open to new forms of seeing (or hearing or tasting, etc) will do the same.