OBSESSED ABOUT TIME PASSING BY...

From 1974 until his death in 1987, Andy Warhol filled more than 610 boxes with his life’s detritus — T-shirts, invitations, receipts, photographs, letters, anything. He called them Time Capsules, which meant that, unlike their mortal creator, they would travel into the future. They would preserve evidence of what it was like to be alive and famous for a heady 13 years in New York. The boxes are kept at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, his home town. You will be able to view the contents of Capsule 92 at the Other Voices, Other Rooms exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London in October. Only 172 capsules have so far been opened. What are they all about? Matt Wrbican, archivist of the museum, points out that Warhol made up different versions of his life story for journalists. He did this so successfully that, even when he told them the truth, they ended up printing the lies. But the capsules do not lie. “They are,” says Wrbican, “evidence of the truth.”

-Sunday Times
August 24 2008