Real pop art in Fort Collins? You betcha! An Andy Warhol soup can is now on display right in front of the old high school on Remington. See? We’re not a bunch of hicks.
Here’s how we got the lawn art:
“The soup can was part of a (1981) exhibit of Warhol’s work at CSU, and was painted by university student Bruce Conway,” says the University Center for the Arts. “The artwork was painted onto sections of donated construction pipe following Warhol’s specifications that it look like something ‘right off the supermarket shelf.’”
Then Warhol showed up and signed it.
But Warhol brought more than his pen to Fort Collins. He also brought big city artistic irony–way before that kind of thing was everywhere.
I wonder who “got it” when he agreed to come to Fort Collins only on the promise of getting to stay with John Denver. Or invited a cow to come to the signing. Or showed extra fascination with bovine semen extraction methods at CSU.
Hey! Was Andy Warhol implying that we’re a bunch of …?
Warhol in Fort Collins, 1981
Visit his can on the lawn of the University Center for the Arts (Formerly Fort Collins High School) on Remington Street for a close up look. And for gawd’s sake, change out of yer Carhartts before you go.
Credits
This story is largely a retelling of Museum Cache, a weekly broadcast from the Fort Collins Museum that airs on KRFC 88.9 every Monday during the news (7:30 am and 5 pm). The museum folks just handed the script over to me. All I did was edit and take photos of the can.
I’d like to point out that museums and history associations in every town are not always thrilled about these “lost” city blogs. That’s why ours is the best ever–they treat their archives and knowledge like a community resource/service so anybody can become a local historian.
A shout out also to Beth Flowers of FlowersontheTable, who first told me about the soup can.
Awesome cow story. I’m sure Andy was Eloquent.
[...] check out the Lost Fort Collins blog article on Warhol’s visit here. Tags: Andy Warhol, CSU This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 10:10 pm and is [...]
I remember when the actual event happened at CSU and was a graduate of FCHS in 1988. To this day I am disappointed that it is no longer FCHS. But glad that the building was saved and is being used.
Do I remember correctly that there were two cans? They sat near the art building on the CSU campus for several years.
Also a FCHS grad and glad to see the old building being used. A recent walk-around prior to a concert brought back memories.
Hey, when the can disappeared from CSU, the story going around campus was that it had been stolen. So, it never was stolen? Or, was it recovered?