Andy Warhol's mural for the 1964 World's Fair in New York. 
AP Photo/The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society.


Exhibition at Queens Museum will Recreate Andy Warhol’s World’s Fair Mural


In 1964, Pop artist Andy Warhol was commissioned to create a mural for the World’s Fair in New York. The work, which depicted the New York Police Department’s thirteen most-wanted criminals, was deemed inappropriate for the family-friendly event. It was painted over before the fair opened to the public. Fifty years later, the mural will be brought to light in the exhibition 13 Most Wanted Men: Andy Warhol and the 1964 World’s Fair at the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, New York.


Following the World’s Fair fiasco, Warhol produced another set of the “Most Wanted Men” paintings using the screens he had used to make the mural. Nine of the these works, which are being loaned from various collections, will be on view for the first time since their creation. The exhibition will also include a selection of paintings and sculpture from 1964 as well as never-before-displayed archival documents and materials from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.


Warhol was one of ten artists commissioned by celebrated architect Philip Johnson to create 20-foot-by-20-foot artworks for the outside of the pavilion where the World’s Fair was held. When his initial mural was rejected, Warhol offered to create a replacement — 25 portraits of the fair’s controversial head, Robert Moses, arranged in a grid. The work was rejected by Johnson and Warhol never made another public work.


13 Most Wanted Men: Andy Warhol and the 1964 World’s Fair was developed collaboratively by the Queens Museum and the Andy Warhol Museum. The exhibition will be on view at the Queens Museum from April 27 through September 7. The show will then travel to the Andy Warhol Museum where it will be displayed from September 27 through January 5, 2015.