- Forbes Dead Celebrity
2005Forbes magazine lists Andy Warhol as the “Fourth Highest Paid Dead Celebrity.” Warhol’s name generated over $16 million in sales for the past year alone.
- Postal Stamp
2002The United States Postal Service issues a stamp based on Warhol’s "Self-Portrait", 1964.
- The Andy Warhol Museum
1994The Andy Warhol Museum opens in Pittsburgh, with a collection of over four thousand works.
- "Songs for Drella"
1990"Songs for Drella", a tribute album to Andy Warhol, is released, marking a brief reunion of The Velvet Underground.
- "Shot Red Marilyn" and Retrospective
1989Shot Red Marilyn is sold for $4.1 million at Christie’s in New York, setting a new standard for Warhol paintings. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, holds a large retrospective of Warhol’s oeuvre, which travels to Chicago, London, Cologne, Venice and Paris.
- Auction
1988Warhol’s extensive personal collection of art, craft objects, jewelry and antiques is sold at record prices at two legendary auctions; proceeds benefit The Andy Warhol Foundation.
- $10 Million Soup Cans
1987Irving Blum, owner of the Ferus Gallery, is offered $10 million for the first set of "Campbell’s Soup Cans".
- "Black Monday"
1987“Black Monday” on the Stock Exchange brings a decade of relative prosperity to an abrupt end. In October 1987, share prices fall to lower levels than in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
- Warhol Dies
1987Warhol is admitted to the hospital for emergency gallbladder surgery. He unexpectedly dies on February 22 from complications arising from an allergic reaction to penicillin. His estate brings wrongful death charges against the hospital. The suit is settled out of court for $3 million. Warhol is buried (wearing wig and sunglasses) in the St. John the Baptist Byzantine Cemetery, Pittsburgh. Socialites and celebrities are excluded from his funeral; only family members and a contingent of Factory employees are invited. A Mass is held for Warhol at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, on April Fools’ Day. Yoko Ono reads the eulogy; two thousand mourners attend. Warhol specified that the inheritance of his estate be used to form a charitable arts foundation, giving life to The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., currently one of the most important sources of support for emerging artists and contemporary-art institutions.
- Mercedes-Benz
1986Mercedes-Benz commissions Warhol to work on a series, “Cars.” For Parisian art dealer Alexandre Iolas, Warhol works on paintings of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Warhol’s television series is shown on MTV under the title “Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes.”
- Bret Easton Ellis
1985Bret Easton Ellis publishes "Less Than Zero", the first of several novels that chronicle the nocturnal downtown Manhattan avant-garde.
- "The Love Boat"
1985The Campbell Soup Company hires Warhol to produce a series based on their dry soup products. He appears on the 200th episode of “The Love Boat.” A crazed fan pulls off Warhol’s wig during a signing of his book America; he had been consistently wearing a wig in public since the mid-1960s. At Area, a New York nightclub, Warhol creates Invisible Sculpture; he stands on a plinth and then leaves it, but the “sculpture” remains, as indicated by a label.
- Music Videos
1984Warhol directs music videos for The Cars, Miguel Bose, Laura Donne Berte, Walter Steding and Curiosity Killed the Cat. "Collaborations: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, Andy Warhol" opens at the Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich. Warhol purchases the Edison Building on East 33rd Street, New York, to house his studio and offices of the magazine Interview.
- Truman Capote Dies
1984Truman Capote dies.
- AIDS
1984Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is
- Basquiat
1983Graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat moves into one of Warhol’s apartments; they later coproduce a series of large, collaborative paintings. The exhibition Warhol’s "Animals: Species at Risk" is shown at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and then travels to a number of natural-history museums in the United States.
- Nancy Reagan
1981First Lady Nancy Reagan appears on the cover of "Interview".
- "Andy Warhol's TV"
1980“Andy Warhol’s TV” (a celebrity interview program featuring guests such as David Hockney and Diana Vreeland), is launched and runs until 1982. “Andy Warhol’s Fashion,” highlighting New York fashion figures, premieres on Manhattan cable-access channels. Warhol, a devout Catholic who goes to Mass every day, accompanied by Fred Hughes, his business manager, has an audience with the Pope at the Vatican.
- Lennon, Reagan, Camcorder
1980- The Beatle John Lennon is assassinated in Central Park.
- Ronald Reagan is elected President of the United States.
- Sony introduces the first commercially available camcorder.
- Iran
1979The Shah of Iran is overthrown; Iranians take 66 Americans hostages at the American Embassy in Tehran for 444 days.
- Capote on "Interview"
1979Truman Capote, Warhol’s youthful obsession, appears on the cover of Interview.
- Warhol meets Beuys
1979Warhol meets Joseph Beuys in New York at the Beuys retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Heiner Bastian commissions Warhol to take Polaroid photos on which his subsequent Beuys portraits are based. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, mounts the exhibition Andy Warhol: Portraits of the 70s. Andy Warhol’s Exposure, a book of photographs, is published.
- 50
1978Warhol turns 50 years old. At his party at Studio 54, club owner Steve Rubell dumps a garbage can filled with one thousand dollars over Warhol’s head as a gift.
- Carter and Punk Rock
1977Punk rock is an underground sensation.
Jimmy (James Earl) Carter is elected President of the United States.
- Cindy Sherman
1977American photographer Cindy Sherman begins working on the “Untitled Film Stills” series.
- Studio 54
1977Studio 54 opens in New York. Warhol becomes a regular, along with Liza Minelli, Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote and Calvin Klein. The Museum of American Folk Art, New York, shows Warhol’s folk-art collection in the exhibition Andy Warhol’s “Folk and Funk.”
- Mao Dies
1976Mao Tse-Tung dies in Beijing.
- Minox 35EL
1976Warhol buys the smallest camera on the market at the time, the Minox 35EL, which allows him to capture candid images. He starts work on a joint project with realist painter Jamie Wyeth. The Württenbergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany, mounts the first comprehensive exhibition of Warhol’s drawings, which travels to Düsseldorf, Bremen, Munich, Berlin, Vienna and Lucerne.
- Ozone Layer
1975Scientists discover a hole in the ozone layer.
- "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol"
1975Warhol writes The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) in collaboration with Pat Hackett. He is invited to a White House dinner for the Shah of Iran. Warhol buys his first Rolls Royce Silver Shadow.
- Nixon Resigns
1974President Nixon resigns; Gerald R. Ford is sworn into office.
- Joseph Beuys
1974Joseph Beuys stages his first “action,” "I Like America and America Likes Me," at the René Block Gallery in New York.
- "Time Capsules"
1974- Warhol begins to assemble Time Capsules: assortments of everyday objects, documents, notes, letters, etc. packed into cardboard boxes, labeled and stored away.
- He buys a townhouse on East 66th Street and moves the Factory to 860 Broadway.
- "Bonanza" and Wounded Knee
1973- “Bonanza” ends its fourteen-year run on television, signaling the decline of the Western on television.
- A 200-person American Indian Movement contingent comes under siege at Wounded Knee.
- Polaroid
1973- An American Family (the first television reality series featuring the Loud family) premieres on PBS.
- Abortion is legalized in the United States.
- The United States pulls out of Vietnam.
- Polaroid introduces one-step instant photography with the SX-70 camera.
- Nixon in China
1972President Nixon makes a historic visit to Communist China and is later reelected.
- Mother Dies
1972Warhol begins to dictate his diary to Pat Hackett; it is published later after his death.
He returns to painting Mao portraits, and supports Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern by creating a garish silkscreen of Richard Nixon.
Julia Warhola dies in Pittsburgh at age 80; Warhol does not attend the funeral.
- Brando
1972Marlon Brando stars in Francis Ford Coppola’s "The Godfather" and Bernardo Bertolucci’s "Last Tango in Paris".
- "Society" Portraits and "Pork"
1971Warhol begins painting commissioned “society” portraits. His play "Pork" is performed by the LaMama Experimental Theater Club, New York, and at the Round House Theatre, London. Edie Sedgwick, a young New York socialite and model, who starred in more than fifteen Warhol films, dies of “acute barbiturate intoxication,” according to the coroner’s report; Warhol does not attend the funeral. He designs the cover for the Rolling Stones’ album "Sticky Fingers".
- Beatles, Joplin, Kent State
1970- The Beatles break up.
- Musician Janis Joplin is found dead of a heroin overdose.
- Protesting students are shot at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio.
- Campbell Soup Cans
1970A hand-painted Campbell’s Soup Can sells for $60,000 at auction, a record for a work by a living American artist.
- "Interview" Magazine
1969For the first time, Warhol’s income as an artist exceeds his previous earnings from his commercial work. He opens an adult cinema called "Andy Warhol’s Theater: Boys to Adore Galore" (which closes after a few months) and a regular cinema called the "New Andy Warhol Garrick Theater", both in mid-town Manhattan. The first issue of Warhol’s "Interview", a Monthly Film Journal is published.
- Moon and Woodstock
1969- Neil Armstrong becomes the first man on the moon.
- Approximately 500,000 people attend Woodstock, a weekend concert in upstate New York.
- "Midnight Cowboy" and "Easy Rider"
1969- John Schlesinger’s movie Midnight Cowboy and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider are released.
- Liza Minelli is nominated for an Academy Award for The Sterile Cuckoo.
- John Wayne wins an Academy Award for playing Rooster Cogburn in True Grit.
- Events of 1968
1968- Tom Wolfe publishes The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.
- Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis.
- Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles.
- Photographs of the Earth are taken from the Moon.
- Richard M. Nixon is elected President of the United States.
- American Indian Movement
1968American Indian Movement is founded in Minneapolis by a group of Anishinabe (Chipewa).
- Warhol Shot
1968Warhol films Lonesome Cowboys in Tucson. Stockholm’s Moderna Museet mounts the first European survey of Warhol’s work, which travels to Amsterdam, Berne and Oslo. The Factory moves to 33 Union Square West. Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) manifesto, obsessed with Warhol, shoots him. Warhol is prematurely pronounced dead upon arrival at a New York hospital.
- "Hair", Heroin and McLuhan
1967Marshall McLuhan publishes The Medium Is the Message.
The rock musical Hair opens in New York.
The number of heroin addicts in the United States reaches an estimated 750,000; involvement in Vietnam is blamed for the surge in heroin availability.
- "The Velvet Underground and Nico"
1967Warhol produces The Velvet Underground’s first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico. He designs its infamous album cover featuring a yellow banana sticker that can be peeled off to reveal a phallic, pink banana underneath.
Warhol moves the Factory to a loft on Union Square.
- Peace March
1967Tens of thousands of people take part in a peace march on Washington.
Update Sources
