Warhol: Fabricated, featuring 150+ works by the late pop artist, opened at the new visual arts institute AEIVA in January. Already the highest-attended visual arts exhibition in the university’s history, Warhol: Fabricated attracted almost 2,700 visitors during its run. Patrons ranged from UAB faculty and students to members of the Birmingham community as well as K-12 students from local and regional schools. “This exhibition has been a great jumping off point for people who are just starting to learn about the visual arts in a more contemporary context,” says AEIVA director Lisa Tamiris Becker. 

In 2008, the Andy Warhol Foundation gifted 150 photographic works to UAB as part of their Photographic Legacy Program, which was launched in honor of the Foundation’s 20th anniversary in 2007. The program has donated 28,500 photographs by Andy Warhol to educational institutions across the United States. Just a few years after the Photographic Legacy Program gifted these works, the Foundation donated nine Warhol silkscreen prints to UAB. These works are now a part of the permanent art collection at AEIVA, and was the cornerstone of the Warhol show.

Warhol: Fabricated is just the beginning for the new visual arts institute. The exhibit was covered by local, regional, and national press, including The New York Times. Public reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Becker and curator John Fields. Because of this, the institute is looking forward to welcoming other impressive exhibits in the future. “We are hard at work on exhibition programming spanning the next several years,” says Fields. The sculpture work of African-American artist Willie Cole is planned for summer 2015, and an exhibition featuring the large-scale aerial photographs of David Maisel is scheduled for the fall. Shows featuring the work of contemporary Cuban/Cuban-American artists Enrique Martinez Celaya, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Luis Cruz Azcaceta are scheduled for 2016.