The late pop artist Andy Warhol was a lot of other things, too, including a celebrity, entrepreneur, social commentator and innovator.
But most people know him for his posterlike prints in bright colors, especially the famous Campbell's soup cans and portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe.
And now he comes to Sioux Falls, as a special 63-piece Warhol exhibit opens Friday at the Visual Arts Center in the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science. The show was last seen in Sweden last summer and will stay in Sioux Falls through Sept. 11.
"The Prints of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)" is one of the biggest-name art shows to appear at the Pavilion, says David Merhib, director of the Visual Arts Center.
"It's not a retrospective but includes some of his earlier and later works," Merhib said. "There are some of the series pieces and some individual works."
It's a special grouping of examples of Warhol's works.
"This is a substantially different version than our other exhibits that have been shown before in the United States," said Jesse Kowalski, director of exhibitions at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pa.
"We included cowboys and Indians for the exhibit, shown in a small town in northern Sweden," Kowalski said. "They're all silkscreened prints, the same process Warhol used for paintings, but they're on paper."
A new feature at the Pavilion is the addition of 40 audio wands available to patrons. For a $5 rental, visitors touch a number on the wand screen that corresponds to a number on each Warhol piece, then hold the wand speaker to one ear to hear information about each piece of artwork.
Photographs taken by Warhol
Also in the show are photographs taken by Warhol, on loan from Augustana College's permanent art collection.
In early 2008, Augustana received 150 original Polaroid photographs and gelatin silver prints by Warhol. The Polaroids were taken of people he was making portraits of.
The pictures have only been shown in public once, said Lindsay Twa, professor of art at Augustana and director of its Eide/Dalrymple Gallery, and only a few were included in a 2009 show among other works from the college's permanent collection.