C a r p a t h o - R u s y n   R a d i o   P r o g r a m

The Andy Warhol Stamp Unveiled
at The Andy Warhol Museum
117 Sandusky Street
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Friday, August 9, 2002


Interview with Tom Sokolowski, Director of the Andy Warhol Museum

Jerry Jumba: Ladies and Gentlemen, we are talking with Tom Sokolowski, the Director of the Andy Warhol Museum. Here in Pittsburgh we are celebrating the new issue of an Andy Warhol stamp. Mr. Sokolowski has used this expression "the coin of the realm" as taking on the image of an artist -- expressed on this stamp!

I found that so fascinating in the speech -- could you expound on that, Mr. Sokolowski? And I must say, welcome to the show!

Tom Sokolowski: Thank you so much. I was so pleased after how many celebrations here of Rusyn culture here to be on your program. I think what I was talking about is the fact that any painting of Warhol's or anyone else's -- that may be a million dollars tomorrow, ten million the next year, and then zero, who knows, because it is about the market. It doesn't change the quality of the work, but in a stamp, or a coin, you have five cents in your pocket or fifty cents or twenty-five cents and it buys you something! It buys you a candy bar, or maybe it buys you a candy bar now-a-days, but that means -- that "thing" with an image of someone -�� and it is usually in the image of a king, or what have you -- is in and of itself worth something! And it represents the people. It represents America. It represents France. Here -- all of a sudden we have a postage stamp that represents America. And I think all those interested in your program whether it is Rusyn culture or not, should see it -- in a way of an artist -- which is not in most cultures -�� unless they become as famous as Warhol -�� being considered very important. Bankers are important. Politicians are important. Scientists are important, but not artists.

Now here was a kid who when he started in this picture in 1963, so Andy would have been a young guy. He certainly was not famous at that point. He had just come to New York to change the way he wanted to live, to be something different. And I think that is what's important for me. I talked about that fact that we can't forget that artists struggle -- the struggle, because it is easy to look at the end when they are famous, but when they are hungry and living in horrible situations as they often do when they are young and try to create something whether it is a book or a piece of music or a painting that will influence you or me for the rest of our lives. For our children or our grandchildren for people who maybe don't speak the same language who will look at that and say what that person did is so transformative that I can feel what Mozart felt back then or an ancient carver back in 10th century BC Athens or Andy Warhol in 1949 Pittsburgh or 1963 New York. That is amazing, and yet artists do that struggling against all odds, and I think it is important that we remember that.

Because one of things that the Postal Service does ��- which I really wasn't aware of -�� is that the only people who will ever be recognized on stamps are always deceased and the government feels it doesn't want to aid, by the use of a stamp, someone's career, whether it's a politician or whatever, but in another way I think that is probably bad. I mean, what if we put some young rap singer or a young Rusyn folk dancer or whatever. I mean maybe that would be a kind of encouragement to say that when you're young and unknown you have a future ahead of you, and you are the future's culture. And maybe that is the sort of thing I'd like people to think about today. That it is not just about wealth. Its not just about Warhol being famous and all that. It is about someone who struggled to make something wonderful and beautiful and now that think and that person represents our nation, and that is extraordinary.

Jumba: The fact that he would take the Campbell's Soup can and say this is what common people eat, and what common people eat is important -- I think I just quoted you...

Sokolowski: Yes, you're absolutely right.

Jumba: ...is saying something about the sense of Andy's connection to the common man and finding beauty and strength in his American environment that he needed to beautify and make important. Could you expound on that because I found it fascinating that you said that?

Sokolowski: Well I think the point is -- Warhol was not wealthy when he grew up. Neither were his parents and yet he grew up, and then if he hadn't become famous he would have lived to the age of fifty something and he would not have starved, and it is because ordinary people like his father and mother -- maybe they made soup home cooked, but maybe they made it out of a can like so many of our mothers did, and because of that he was here to tell a story. And what if you are a great person you have potential for greatness. Well that can come from the beginnings of Campbell's soup as well. I think we often forget that you have to have great experiences. I think someone who has not lived -- I don't mean you have to live through pain or poverty, but only those people -- can speak to a larger and larger audience -�� I think.

Jumba: I think that some people don't get Andy Warhol's work ethic. And how tremendous it was.

Sokolowski: Oh, tremendous! The number of times I met Andy -�� once or twice I was at the factory. I remember everyone else was dancing and drinking or having -�� you know -- sex, in some instances, and whatever else they were doing. But he was always working, because that is what you did in his background because there was no time for fooling around. I mean -- because you have to go to work, because there wasn't much money, and that money had to be put on the table. It's like a summary of our backgrounds -- Italian, Polish, German, Rusyn -- working class is working class. I think that is something that always stuck with him. He would say, even though he was absolutely dazzled by movie stars and half the people who surrounded him ��- who were a bunch of jerks in a number of ways -- who were -- you know -- trust fund babies and some of them had legacies. And it is so interesting ��- so many of them -- we were just talking about that the other day -�� so many of them blew these huge legacies. "Hey, here is a kid {Andy Warhol) who didn't have" -- as my father would say vulgarly -�� "a pot to piss in" he (Warhol) now died leaving a half billion dollars in Americana. I mean, that is so much more a legacy then someone who happened to be Rockefeller or whatever -- just because of it and then blew their brains out through foolishness. And I think that is the strength of that legacy -�� it is the strength of the American way and people like Warhol and like so many of us.

Jumba: The genius that came through him then -- embraces what you described, and so today we had the mayor of Pittsburgh here!

Sokolowski: Yes!

Jumba: And who were some of the other important people who brought their presence to give witness to...

Sokolowski: Well, there is a gentleman whose name I don't remember because a vice-commissioner of the postal service couldn't come because of an illness in the family. He was here from the postal service in Washington, DC. And Joel Wax, who is the President of the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York City where Mr. John Warhola -�� whom your listeners will know of -�� sits on the Executive Board of that Foundation. There were some state of Pennsylvania representatives. A Mr. Bill Pottuto, who was behind us, one of the members of city council was here. There were other state representatives here. I think they thought it was important to be here.

Jumba: The unveiling was exciting.

Sokolowski: Yes, I think so; it was very exciting.

Jumba: There was a lot of anticipation.

Sokolowski: Right!

Jumba: There was a hush in the crowd. This is a great accomplishment -- to have this Warhol Museum here in Pittsburgh. It could have been anywhere else.

Sokolowski: Yes!

Jumba: As it was stated it is important for us to know that this museum keeps speaking about art in a special way. Could you leave our listeners with an embellishment on that thought? Why is this museum here in Pittsburgh, and what does it keep saying to us?

Sokolowski: OK, well I think its here in Pittsburgh because, number one -- Warhol is from here, and so it was appropriate to have it here. Our other sister museums in the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh had the wisdom to say we should take this on. This is a good thing for the community.

Also, Warhol took chances. Carnegie Museum people here were willing to say, well let's put it on the North Side -- a place that was awful. I mean, when I got here in 1996, just across the way there were still derelict houses with drunks. There was like a murder in one house. One person almost died from a house burning down. There was nothing here, and yet what do we have now after the Warhol Museum? We have the international headquarters of the Alcoa Company. We have two major sports stadium facilities. We now have another building being built by Alcoa. This is now -�� I think the place that just as many places in the world were -�� once there were great places that people lived -- and they went by the by for a hundred years, and they came back and they re-live, and I think that is the vitality of any city. It lives and it grows. Ah, we have moments when we are on top, and moments when we are on the bottom.

And ah, you know, I was just thinking -- for all the people -�� if Warhol was here today -- that fact I think that the mayor of the city and Warhol didn't have great feelings about Pittsburgh as you may know -- he didn't like it very much -�� because he wasn't accepted here for a lot of reasons, but that the mayor of the city was here -- that would be very important!

Jumba: The fact that you can openly say that Andy Warhol was a gay man and an artist -- and that America has this diversity -- and his presence speaks about this diversity as valid now and throughout history -�� do you feel that this is also part of the greening of the consciousness of America?

Sokolowski: Oh, certainly! I think so, because -�� well, it's probably because people who are born to be -- who they are born to be. And sometimes I think when you don't fit in -�� whether it's your sexual identity, or ethnicity, or religion, or race -�� when you're the one kid in the class whose color is different or you speak oddly according to those people, that -- sometimes sadly -�� you fall by the wayside, and one can't even fault you for it. It is a hard struggle, and yet so often times, it is those misfits of the world when they were kids who become the geniuses because everything is channeled into it! And I certainly don't believe that everyone -- to be an artist of any stripe you have to be unhappy -�� I don't believe that, but if you have a life or you have a wonderful family, parents and grandparents and then you have your own spouse and children perhaps, and you have decent job, and a little bit of money. You know then life is easy, whereas, if some of those -�� no family, no money, no place in the world -�� you got to channel that, or blow your brains out, or channel it somewhere. It is in that intense channeling that art is created. And I think -�� thank God for the misfits of the world!

Jumba: Thank you so much for wonderful explanation of . . .

Sokolowski: Oh, Thank you!

Jumba: Thank you for this wonderful explanation of what is happening here today. We American Carpatho-Rusyns are very proud of this moment of the unveiling of the Warhol stamp. Every year Carpatho-Rusyns in this area have a beautiful event here. We are proud to be here and bring some of that life also -�� and participate! Thank you so much!

Sokolowski: Thank you! Bye bye now! We'll look forward to seeing you next year!

Jumba: OK.