True Visionary: Inside the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh

A canvas with repeated imagery of Elvis Presley — just a bit larger than life size — graces the wall of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Made with black ink layered on a silver background, the stunning silk screen print is one of the most recognizable works that Warhol, a prolific artist and filmmaker, produced during his lifetime.

“Some of the image is very crisp and clear, in other areas it’s a little blurry, it might be fainter, and part of that is the effect of the silk screen,” says museum director Mario Rossero. “It really grabs your attention.”

Co-founded in 1989 and opened in 1994, Pittsburgh was selected as the Warhol’s location because of its connection to the artist’s life. It was his birthplace, and he studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

See work from when Warhol was a student to early pop art and pieces through the ‘80s. According to Rossero, the museum has 500,000 objects in its archival collection — the world’s largest collection of Warhol art and archives — including letters and personal items.

“You can see different aspects of the artist that you may not see if you only looked at the art,” Rossero says.

Start on the museum’s seventh floor to take a chronological tour. Moving down, take in Warhol’s forays into pop art.

“You see Coca-Cola bottles, of course you see soup cans, you see Brillo boxes. And then we start to see some superstars, Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor portraits,” Rossero explains. “As you progress, you get into more collaborations with other artists and art forms and bands like the Velvet Underground. … [It] broadens your sense of this artist who worked across so many genres and different media.”

Make sure to see Warhol’s high-contrast collaborations with painter and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, including a series of 10 eye-catching punching bags.

“They each have their own unique sort of visual language that they’re bringing to the work,” Rossero says.

Visit a film and video gallery on the fourth floor to explore more of Warhol’s videos — and, using a “screen test machine,” produce your own version of short films Warhol created between 1964 and 1966.

“Warhol’s direction was not to have a conversation necessarily, or even portray an emotion or a feeling or a thought, but just really … spend time in stillness with the camera,” he notes. “They’re really striking.”

Until March 9, visitors can encounter “Andy Warhol: Vanitas.”

“Think about vanity, think about contemplation of life and death,” Rossero says. “Think about beauty, art, the temporality that we all face as human beings.”

From April 9 to June 2, the Warhol presents “Up, Up and Away.” The activation of the museum’s second floor expands the presence of Warhol’s “Silver Clouds”— “silver mylar pillow-shaped objects” that are part air and part helium.

“They float through the air, and people can touch and interact with them,” Rossero says. “Usually, when you walk into that gallery, you might encounter 15 to 20 of those. But we’re looking for the spring to really have this sort of Silver Cloud takeover of our second floor. So, all I can say is that there’ll be a lot of joy.”

Rossero notes that “any living artist” is connected to Warhol, whose style transcends time.

“He certainly has found a way,” he says, “to live much longer into the future.”

117 Sandusky St., Pittsburgh, 412-237-8300, warhol.org