We all know that Andy Warhol was actually born in Pittsburgh, PA., in 1928. However, what most people do not know is that his parents came over to America from Medzilaborce, a town of 6,000 in Northeast Slovakia. As in many villages in this area, the western edge of what used to be called Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, many of the people here are Ruthenians, a Slavic ethnic group related to Ukrainians that settled in this part of Slovakia after the 6th century. The Ruthenian language is a dialect of Ukrainian. Many Gypsies live here, too.
Medzilaborce is situated in the rugged wooded foothills of the Carpathian mountains about six miles from the border with Poland, 30 miles from Ukraine and a good 90 minutes drive along winding roads from Presov, the nearest good-sized city. It is one of those places people visit without really knowing what to expect. But they go anyway, because this is also one of those places people visit just to say that they’ve been there.
Medzilaborce is remote and poor and it shows. In short, you need a reason to visit this place. Across the street from the domed Orthodox church sits your reason: the Warhol Family Museum of Modern Art. The museum, a communist-style white boxy building announced by two giant concrete Campbell’s Soup cans out front, is here because Andy’s mother and father, Julia and Andrej Warhola, were born 15 kilometres away in the village Miková.
But still, a museum in Medzilaborce dedicated to Warhol, his family and his art, is seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Think about it and it comes as no surprise: When asked where he was from, the elusive pop artist had once quipped, "I come from nowhere." Yet, thanks to the Medzilaborce museum, "nowhere" is fast becoming a place of pilgrimage for Warhol fans in search of the artist's Eastern European roots.
Today the museum stands as a shrine to an urbane world light-years removed from Medzilaborce's backward and rustic milieu. Founded in 1991 -four years after Warhol’s death and 70 years after his parents emigrated to America- the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art houses today 160 original prints and drawings donated mainly by the Warhol Foundation in New York. Serial portraits of Marilyn Monroe greet the visitor in the museum foyer while aluminum foil awnings deck the ceiling of the museum cafe, which gives a nod to Warhol's Chelsea Factory. The exhibit starts with personal items donated by Warhol’s relatives, including some old photographs from the family album.
The next room features artwork by Andy’s brother John and his son Paul, who uses chicken feet to press imprints on canvas. Then, it is the Warhol originals. Most are prints on cardboard, some hand-coloured, the oldest of which are the Campbell’s Soup I and Campbell’s Soup II pieces. The Red Lenin print and the Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland painted photo are two examples of Warhol’s innovative use of colour. Otherwise normal pictures are manipulated so that the subjects appear other-worldly, even god-like.
In the main hall, Warhol's snakeskin jacket, Brooks Bros. ties, sunglasses, Walkman and ubiquitous camera are enshrined in vitrines, like relics of some saint. Photos of Eddie Sedgewick, Ultra Violet and other Factory personages grace the walls. A lot of this must go over the head of the average visitor. The ground floor is largely given over to the shop and offices, works by local artists and temporary shows, with the Warhol material on upper levels reached by broad stairways. The upstairs mobile consisting of polystyrene dollar bills and the nearby silk-screen icon of four dollar signs strike a chord of empathy, though.
In smaller galleries off the main hall are some works by Warhol's brother, Paul, an amateur artist, and a Warhol nephew, as well as other contemporary artists like the Warhol protegee Ultra Violet. One entire gallery and several side exhibits in cases outside the main exhibition area are devoted to an extraordinary display of Warhol family history and memorabilia, a gluttonous feast for devotees of the trivial: Warhol's octagonal sunglasses, his first camera, his transistor radio, his mother's diary, the little white gown that he and his two brothers were all christened in, old letters from Warhol's mother to her sister back in the village, old photographs, Christmas cards, clippings -even some bills.
Things have not always been easy for the young museum. Not surprisingly, there has been quite a bit of hostility to a museum honouring a man whose art and lifestyle are so at odds with the local mores. Then there was the suspicion that the museum was going to be a cover for American intelligence operations! Yet, with the support of leading Slavic intellectuals such as the Czech President Vaclav Havel, the project managed to get the go-ahead. The Andy Warhol Foundation agreed to loan a number of screen prints and John Warhola donated some of his brother's possessions. Only two years after the Velvet Revolution, the museum was unveiled in a former communist cultural center on Lenin Square, since re-christened Andy Warhol Square.
Some years ago, officials in Slovakia's conservative government unsuccessfully attempted to nationalize the Warhol works and many people in this deeply religious part of Eastern Europe still regard the figure of Warhol with outright suspicion. But these days the social climate has changed considerably as the Slovak Republic is modernizing fast and has joined the European Union. Enthusiasts even say that Warhol may yet become a local hero.
For the time being, though, most of the enthusiasm seems to be coming from abroad and foreign visitors seem to be taking this far-flung destination with surprising frequency. Yet, you have to be a Warholite to go there, since Medzilaborce seems like an awful lot of work to get to: from Bratislava, the trip takes about ten hours by train. In the end, though, thanks entirely to the artwork, most feel that the trip was not a waste. At least they can say they have been there.