12/31/2024
Pop Art and the American Tradition is on through December 31st. Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species portfolio is a series of 10 screenprints produced in 1983.Endangered Species was commissioned and published by Ronald Feldman, an acclaimed New York gallerist and art dealer, who was the catalyst for some of Warhol’s most lauded work of the 1980s, including his Myths (1981) and Ads (1985) series.
Besides being a tastemaker, Feldman was known as an impassioned political advocate and philanthropist, and his commission for this set reportedly came from conversations he and Warhol had on conservation and coastal erosion. As its name would suggest, Endangered Species contains portraits of animals on the brink of extinction through habitat destruction, overuse of commercial or sporting purposes, or other manmade or atural causes, as designated by the United States Endangered Species Act (ESA). The ESA was signed into law just ten years prior to Warhol’s portfolio by President Richard Nixon and represents a massive legislative shift in ecological conservation efforts both in the US and internationally. The portfolio highlights ten animals, in order: African Elephant, Pine Barrens Tree Frog, Giant Panda, Bald Eagle, Siberian Tiger, San Francisco Silverspot, Orangutan, Grevy’s Zebra, Black Rhinoceros, and Bighorn Ram.As of 2021, six of those ten animals are still threatened with possible extinction.
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Andy Warhol
Giant Panda (FS II.295), 1983
Signed and numbered in pencil lower left margin Screenprint in colors on Lenox Museum Board
38 x 38 in.
96.5 x 96.5 cm.
Edition of 150
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Andy Warhol
Pine Barrens Tree Frog (FS II. 294), 1983
Signed and numbered in pencil lower left margin Screenprint in colors on Lenox Museum Board
38 x 38 in.
96.5 x 96.5 cm.
Edition of 150
