History
Plans for the museum were announced in October 1989, about 2½ years after Warhol's death. At the time of the announcement, works worth an estimated $80 million were donated to the newly-announced museum by the AWFVA and the Dia Foundation. Thomas N. Armstrong III, who had been the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1974 to 1990, was named the museum's first director in 1993.
By 1993, the 88,000-square-foot (8,200 m2) industrial warehouse and its extensive renovations had cost about $12 million, and the AWFVA had donated more than 1000 of Warhol's works worth over $55 million, a donation that grew to about 3000 works.
On May 13–14, 1994, the museum attracted about 25,000 visitors to its opening weekend. Armstrong, its founding director, resigned nine months after its opening; at the time of his resignation, the museum had had "tense relations" with the AWFVA and the Carnegie Institute, its financial backer, though The New York Times could find no one involved who would say whether that friction played a role in Armstrong's resignation.
Read more about this topic: The Andy Warhol Museum
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