Unpacking Andy's Boxes
Speaking with archivist Matt Wrbican about Warhol's Time Capsules
by Peter Nesbett

At the time of his death in 1987, Andy Warhol left behind a warehouse full of cardboard boxes that contained the ephemera of his daily life, cleared from his desk on a regular basis from 1974 onward. Most of the material, which includes invoices, publicity stills, newspaper clippings, photographs, etc., is not sorted, and remains in storage at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. I spoke briefly with Matt Wrbican, archivist at the museum, about the Time Capsules and what is being done with them.

How many Time Capsules are there?

Over six hundred. They began as a studio-moving project. Warhol was moving a few doors uptown to a larger space on Union Square.

Did Warhol think of the Time Capsules as an extension of his personal archives, or as an artwork? Or did he not make the distinction between the two?

We believe that he eventually considered them to be an artwork, since he discussed exhibiting them at Castelli. He thought they should be sold, contents unseen, each for the same price. Buying them would have been a game of chance, and there definitely would've been losers. I'm grateful that he could never decide on the price.

He was aware, I assume, of Daniel Spoerri's Snare-Pictures and his book An Anecdoted Topography of Chance (1962), in which he cataloged all the objects on a blue table in his Paris apartment.

Warhol owned one of his dinner table works, and both his library and the Time Capsules include other books published by Dick Higgins, and many other Fluxus-related objects. We haven't found that book, but I found a nice early David Antin book yesterday, Definitions (1967).

How many Time Capsules have you opened?

About 160. I opened number 25 yesterday and I found half a dozen Warhol artworks: a portrait drawing from the fifties, a Polaroid of Bridgit Polk, a self-portrait cube from "Portraits of the Artists," and three photobooths, including one of the most salacious I've ever seen—an unidentified clothed man, whose face is unseen, exposing his penis. Most of the documents were from 1963 to 1970: notes about his early films, some rare exhibition catalogs and underground publications, juicy correspondence, bills for art supplies and medicines, a Chubby Checker LP, and a Velvet Underground single.

What is the strangest thing you've found?

A mummified human foot—an anthropologist examined it for us, and now we think that it was tomb-robbed from Egypt, possibly a victim of the Tut craze of the twenties. Warhol had a phenomenal foot fetish.

What is the Warhol Museum doing with these boxes?

One goal is to preserve and catalog them for access in the future. We started inventorying them in New York in December 1991, and for about two years we pursued that, but it's slowed since then. However, nineteen Time Capsules have been fully cataloged: each item is meticulously described and measured, and assigned an accession number. Another eighty or so have been inventoried, a less thorough process. We always have the entire contents of one of the inventoried Time Capsules displayed in the museum.

There is something wonderfully absurd about seeing an auction house catalog with an accession number, a description of its material composition, its measurements, and a condition report.

Our insurance company prefers the absurdity.

What's your best guess for how much material might be there?

Between 300,000 and 500,000 objects.

Most of this stuff would be considered garbage if it belonged to anyone else.

Because Warhol lived when he did, his packrattitude left a great record of the mundane and the high life of the mid to late twentieth century. We're becoming more digital, losing so much daily stuff; we donÕt receive letters, checks, or paper phone messages, all of which will outlive most e-mails.

Considered artwork, the Time Capsules are reminiscent of Arman's "Poubelles" (initiated in 1959), though Arman was selective about what he put in those trashcans, as many were portraits of specific people.

Warhol owned a Poubelle dated 1970, which pre-dates the start of the Time Capsules. He was also a diarist and obsessively documented his life in other ways. We have over 3,400 tape recordings that he made.

How long would it take to finish cataloging all the contents of the boxes?

Four people working full-time for fifty years.