Through Sept. 20, the Tampa Museum of Art will be displaying Andy Warhol and other postwar-era, cutting-edge printmakers such as Chuck Close and Frank Stella. Three decades of Warhol’s career are chronicled, including those famous portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Mao Zedong–and how often do those two even show up in the same sentence? There’s also his camouflage series and controversial Electric Chair portfolio for fans of his more outlandish works.
The exhibit, “In Living Color: Andy Warhol and Contemporary Printmaking,” comes courtesy of Jordan D. Schnitzer, a Portland, Ore.-based art collector and philanthropist. Schnitzer, the president of Harsch Investment Properties and the eponymous head of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, lends generously and continuously throughout the country, especially to non-mega art markets such as Tampa.
Curiously, Schnitzer has had no working relationship with USF’s Graphicstudio, which dates to the 1960’s renaissance in American printmaking and is considered by many as the U.S. Mecca for printmakers, including the Rauschenbergs, Rosenquists and Lichtensteins. Schnitzer, on hand for the Warhol opening, acknowledged the lack of any formal Graphicstudio relationship but conceded: “We should.”
Who knows, maybe the Schnitzer-TMA connection will ripple even further in this print-familiar market. It should.