Patrick Moore has resigned as director of the Andy Warhol Museum and vice president of Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh. Moore cites personal plans to move to Spain as his reason, but ArtNews notes that his departure comes amid continuing controversy over the so-called ‘Pop District’, a $60 million, 10-year masterplan Moore has been pursuing to transform the neighbourhood surrounding the Warhol Museum.
The district, stretching four blocks, will include ‘a Creative Entrepreneur Lab’, for teaching business acumen to adults, and ‘The Warhol Creative’, in which children will learn digital content production skills with the opportunity to produce material for the museum and companies including computer giant Dell and Howmet Aerospace, local radio station WESA reports. Howmet Aerospace counts the defence industry among its clients. The programmes, Moore envisaged, are primarily aimed at women, people of colour and those that identify as LGBTQ+.
In 2022, the Warhol ran at a loss of about $2.4 million, and its financial problems are likely to be compounded by the increasing number of works by Warhol in the collection that can not be toured due to their age. The institution hoped that another component of the Pop District, a music venue aimed at touring pop musicians and similarly commercial shows, would bring sufficient revenue.
In recent years several senior curators and administrative staff have left the museum, with one former staff member telling WESA that the general feeling was the district took the museum away from its core role of researching and conserving the legacy of Andy Warhol. During Moore’s tenure the number of shows per year at the institution went from a regular three to just two.
Moore said in his leaving statement: ‘My 13 years at The Warhol have been the most formative of my life, and I’m so grateful for having been given this opportunity. After having had a sabbatical in 2023 where my husband and I were able to spend three months at our home in Spain, I have decided our future is there, in his home country. I’m happy to be leaving on the high note of the museum’s 30th anniversary and the opening of my KAWS + Warhol exhibition the weekend of May 17. And I look forward to continuing to collaborate with and support my many friends at The Warhol and Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.’
