Pop into Spring

Join the Hilliard Art Museum in South Louisiana this spring as they examine the legacy of pop art with works from Andy Warhol. 

When you go somewhere, who is the friend that you’re bringing along? “What is that moment with a plus-one that changes your life for better or worse,” asks Aaron Garvey, the Hilliard Art Museum’s curator-at-large. Furthermore, how can added individuals alter the trajectory of one’s life? 

This spring, the Hilliard Art Museum is examining these questions through the legacy of pop art. Its newest exhibitions, “Andy Warhol: Plus One” and “Rachel Libeskind: If There Be Nothing New, But That Which Is,” are up through August 15 in Lafayette, Louisiana.  

“Plus One” features photographs and art by Warhol, exploring the idea of inner circles or companions through Polaroids he took throughout his life. 

Warhol was a pioneering artist and a leading figure in the 1960s pop art movement. Pop art emerged in the United States in the late 1950s, including imagery from mass culture. He is best known for depicting everyday consumer goods and celebrity images in his art as commentary on consumerism and fame. But photography also played a big role in his studio practice. Much like social media allows for today, Warhol was a content creator who captured anyone who crossed his path. 

The works featured in the exhibit are part of the Hilliard’s permanent collection of art—but had been hidden away for almost 20 years. As part of a photographic legacy project, in 2007 The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts in New York City dispersed about 30,000 works of art and photographs to about 100 museums around the country. The Hilliard was a recipient. 

 The photos themselves are up-close portraits, mirroring the intimacy of the gatherings—from parties to studio sessions—they were taken at. The exhibit reminded me that everyone is a character in someone else’s story, for better, for worse or for nothing at all. I walked away thinking about the beauty of experiencing regular moments in life with someone else, no matter their role in your own. 

Molly Rowe, executive director of the Hilliard, says contemporary artist Rachel Libeskind’s exhibit, “If There Be Nothing New, But That Which Is,” is a continuation of the legacy of pop art pioneered by Warhol. 

“Rachel is looking at it from the perspective of today … using similar strategies that were started in this art movement to influence our practice today,” she says. “And she’s asking questions about the world around her, in a similar way that Andy Warhol was.” 

Libeskind—who says her work is “about everything”—works in collage and printmaking, using contemporary and historical imagery layered with oil pastels, acrylic paint and other materials. “It all touches upon tiny, tiny pieces of life that make up this big whole that we all exist in,” she explains.

If Warhol’s exhibit made me think about the beauty in the intimacy of experience, then Libeskind’s reminded me that we are moving away from that. Everyday experiences are commodified through content and are lacking that intimate beauty found in Warhol’s portraits.

“As an artist, part of my job, my calling is to assemble and organize and try to make order and sense in a new narrative out of it,” Libeskind says about our constant inundation with content. 

Rowe says the Hilliard’s exploration of pop art is important because Warhol’s way of thinking about visual culture is so relevant now that images dominate our daily lives. “We’re really inviting people to think about that—what we see and the role of images in our daily lives, and how that really shapes how we perceive the world.”