PITTSBURGH (PRNewswire-iReach) – After graduating in 1994 from the University of Pittsburgh with a double major in art history and Japanese, Eric Shiner began a one-year internship at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh the week it opened its doors. He went on to become an expert in contemporary Chinese and Japanese art, and in 2008, he received a phone call from the then-director of The Warhol, asking him if he would like to become the Milton Fine Curator of Art. Shiner accepted the offer and returned to his hometown. He became director of the museum in January 2011.

In the days leading up to The Warhol’s private party at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, the American private aviation company XOJET spoke with Shiner about leading one of the most innovative museums in the world while protecting the work of one of the most famous artists in history.

XOJET: What distinguishes The Andy Warhol Museum and what are your goals?

ES: We’ve just completed a year-long strategic planning process that we’re going to start implementing in January. Goal #1 is how we become the source on all things Warhol, how we become the holder and the keeper of Warhol’s legacy, and how we share that with the world. Also, we’re going to start focusing on the visitor experience, and leading up to our 20-year anniversary in May 2014, we’re doing a huge ground-floor transformation, re-installing all seven floors of our galleries from top to bottom, and putting our gallery system into a chronological framework, so you see how Warhol still remains important today.

XOJET: Speaking of today, talk about technology and the museum’s engagement with social media.

ES: It’s in our blood, really, because Warhol was always an innovator in terms of new technology. It came to the point that developers of new products would come to him and ask him to utilize their product in the development of a new work of art. So when the Polaroid camera was invented, they went directly to Warhol and asked him to use it to see what he could do. The same with early tape recording devices, early video cameras, Andy even had an early Amiga computer. He was always ahead of the curve, and because of that, we always think in that direction as well. As Facebook and Twitter were developing, we wanted to be front and center, and we’ve been very successful. Right now, we have more than 485,000 followers on Twitter, making us the eighth-most-followed museum in the world.

XOJET: Warhol’s obsessive documentation certainly anticipated the age of social media.

ES: Absolutely. Think about Andy going home every night, leaving Studio 54 and calling his secretary to talk about the goings-on of the evening, then doing the same thing in the morning. He was constantly recording his life through tape recording and video. It was really an early form of Twitter and Facebook. The question I get the most is “Would Andy be tweeting if he were alive today?” I would say he would have been there from the beginning, because the developers of Facebook and Twitter would have gone to him first. Forget Yale and Harvard, it would have been Andy Warhol.

XOJET: How do you think Warhol would feel about the museum now?

ES: If you’d asked me that question 18 years ago, I think his first critique would be that it’s in Pittsburgh, instead of New York. But now I think that if he were witness to what we’ve achieved, he would be over the moon simply because this museum has helped the city move forward in terms of contemporary culture and open-mindedness probably more than any other institution.

Our motto is, “How do we take something that’s an anomaly and make it a paradigm?” Which is based directly on Warhol’s own life and experiences. What drives our selections in exhibitions is how someone from the outer fringes became one of the most important figures of the 20th century. I think he would have a lot of respect for that.

XOJET: Do you often have to put aside all thoughts of what Andy would do?

ES: Sure. At the end of the day, we have to make decisions based on the good of the museum, not the perceptions of what a ghost would want. Even though we think about what Warhol might do or like, we also remain critically distant, so we’re not all complete Warhol maniacs walking around in white wigs and black clothes. That would just be weird. We do make sure that we are being very critical to the concept of Warhol so we never pander.

XOJET: How have the roles museums play in everyday lives changed during your career?

ES: I’m constantly thinking about that, and of course we are paying close attention to what museums mean to people right now, what they’re going to mean to people in 10 years and 20 years. I think there’s going to be a paradigm shift where the physical experience, sadly, may not be as important to us as the digital experience.

XOJET: So where do you see your museum five, 10 years from now?

ES: We’re heading in so many exciting directions, much of which revolves around us being, once and for all, financially stable. We’re spending the next five years making sure we’re doing everything we can to build our endowment, but also to continue to share the collection and Andy with the world. Ultimately, we’re interested in technology helping us do that so we can involve many more people around the world who might also be able to help support us financially even at low levels of funding. We’re definitely exploring lots of new business development opportunities, and what’s more Warholian than that? He was a man who saw no differentiation between art and business whatsoever and I think it’s our responsibility to look at ways to continue doing that as well.

Visit the Andy Warhol Museum website at www.warhol.org.

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ST. LOUIS (AP) – The St. Louis Art Museum’s new expansion puts its collection in a new light – literally. The wing’s one-of-a-kind grid of skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows illuminate the artworks naturally. The effect is more “honest,” says museum registrar Jeanette Fausz.

“When you do electric light, it does add some color, and that is the element we are removing in these galleries,” said Fausz. “We are allowing you to see it with natural light and bring that color to a more honest look.”

Museum officials offered a sneak peek at the 200,000-square-foot expansion on Dec. 4. Curators will start installing art early next year; the public gets its first look during a two-day festival June 29-30.

Though a growing number of museums use natural light to showcase their collections, the museum’s skylight system is one of a kind, says Roger McFarland of HOK, the St. Louis architectural firm that provided technical assistance to British architect David Chipperfield. The glass walls also won’t tint incoming sunlight. The result is an experience that changes with the weather.

“If you are here on a sunny day and a cloud goes through, you feel it in the gallery,” said McFarland, adding artificial light can be used in the evening and gray days. “You’re going to see the paintings in different colors of light based on the sun.”

The wing includes a 300-space parking garage, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, climate controls to better preserve delicate objects and a 100-seat restaurant. But most importantly, it delivers space. Currently, 94 percent of the museum’s 33,000-object collection is locked in storage.

“The driving force behind this is the need for more space,” said Director Brent Benjamin. “We have a great number of works that haven’t been on view in more than a decade. We have some works that have always been in storage. So every collection gets to loosen its belt a notch or two and have more space for works to be installed.”

The museum will remain free, though there will be a fee to park in the new lot. The museum will continue to charge for touring exhibitions.

Benjamin said the expansion’s 21 new galleries will feature about 250 works from the 20th and 21st century. It also will host special exhibits. The first show, “Postwar German Art in the Collection,” will open in June and feature major works from Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer and others.

“Name virtually any American or German artist of the postwar era that is in our collection and he or she will be on view here in the expansion,” said Benjamin, noting the galleries can accommodate taller and bigger works than the museum’s existing galleries.

The expansion has taken almost three years to complete and cost $162 million. Benjamin said Chipperfield’s design both honors Forest Park and the Cass Gilbert-designed building.

“Instead of giving us a wing that is independent of the main body, he actually has given us an expansion that is organically linked to the facility,” Benjamin said. “It didn’t start that way. It seems very obvious and organic now that we see it, but it took a year of chasing this project around the building – where would it be, how would it connect, would it be low, would it be high?”

Though the light white oak floors and abundant natural light create an airy atmosphere, the polished stone facade and concrete-grid ceiling convey gravitas. The exterior is composed of 23 panels of highly polished Missouri and Wisconsin river aggregate. Each panel weighs between 44,000 and 84,000 pounds. The ceiling is formed from 1,600 cubic yards of poured concrete.

“It’s a building that is about mass, about weight,” Benjamin said. “So much of contemporary museum architecture is about lightness and transparency but this is a building about mass because the Cass Gilbert building is a great big pile of stone. Whatever was going to be here needed to stand up to it in terms of massiveness and weight. That is quite an accomplishment. In many ways it’s very deferential but it has a character of its own and lives very comfortably side by side.”

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP-WF-12-10-12 1545GMT

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HICKORY CORNERS, Mich. (AP) – A West Michigan car museum is offering an exhibition that looks at autos in the Dust Bowl era.

The display at the Gilmore Car Museum coincides with the recent airing of PBS’ two-part television series, The Dust Bowl. The film by Ken Burns features interviews with residents who lived through the Great Depression, drought and wind storms in the 1930s.

The Gilmore museum’s display includes Dust Bowl-themed photographs, but its focus is on the cars of the time.

A Duesenberg custom-built for Hollywood’s elite sits next to a Ford Model T covered with a family’s only belongings.

Museum executive director Michael Spezia says it’s important to “show these automobiles in a setting that reflects the social and economic context of the time period.”

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP-WF-12-10-12 1433GMT

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