Warhol Live! at the De Young Museum in San Francisco

We arrived in the underground parking garage at the De Young - right beside Golden Gate Park - at the opening hour of 9:30, so we got one of the first parking spots and a relatively uncrowded tour of the exhibit. It was fun to have the audio tour - much of the information was given as informal conversation by people that knew Andy Warhol (1928-1987), and was full of interesting facts. I've been to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, and even saw a Warhol at the Belagio a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas, but I learned a lot about him from this exhibit that I'd never known before. It was really the story of his life. The first thing that greeted us was some of his favorite icons from the silver screen, Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, Elvis... The second was a plexiglass wall of all album covers that he designed - I'm thinking there were 52 in all! The wall was covered with album covers from his own collection. We were treated to excerpts from his favorite music throughout our "excursion." Rollin' Stones, Beatles, Jazz, Dylan, Maria Callas. Pieces of his art, his movies-making, his tv show "15-Minutes of Fame", The Factory (his loft in NYC, completely silver), his magazine "Inter View," and his sponsorship/production of The Velvet Underground. Now this was news to me...I loved the Velvet Underground my last two years in high school. One of the rooms we passed through was a strobe-lit, colorfully psychedelic party room with a big, square red "sofa" in the middle, an invitation for reclining and going back a LOT of years. Fantastic exhibit. I feel lucky to have been able to see it.