Castelli Gallery was a recurring exhibition venue in Andy Warhol’s diary and a point where artistic display met the social life surrounding it. Its openings brought together works, artists, collectors, and acquaintances, while Warhol’s entries register his shifting responses to the shows themselves: excitement over a packed reception, disappointment at an absent celebrity, dislike of a retrospective, and the practical business of greeting visitors and signing things.

An Opening Becomes a Social Stage

On January 11, 1977, Warhol’s office waited until six o’clock before going to Castelli Gallery for the opening of his Hammer and Sickle exhibition. The room was initially empty. Warhol and the others gathered around the champagne bar, and the crowd gradually filled the space. The exhibition included one large Hammer and Sickle and eight smaller ones; the opening’s movement from a quiet start to a packed reception gives the diary a compact account of how quickly the gallery could become a social event.

The visitors included David Whitney and Philip Johnson, as well as Paulette Goddard, who asked Warhol to make her a Hammer and Sickle pin. Victor performed by cutting up a shirt. Bianca arrived wearing a dress from Halston’s window that Victor had marked with footprints, while Catherine Guinness wore a red outfit similarly foot-printed by Victor. Their clothing made the exhibition’s social scene visible in the room: fashion, performance, and art appeared together, rather than as separate parts of the evening. Bianca wanted poppers, but nobody had any.

Warhol particularly hoped that Elizabeth Taylor would attend. She did not come, though Halston arrived with a small painting she had made for Warhol after seeing her. Warhol recorded his disappointment at her absence, imagining that her presence would have made the opening something special. The gift softened but did not erase that absence: even amid the gathering crowd, the diary measures the occasion partly against the celebrity who was missing.

After the opening, Warhol gave Jed Johnson $200 to entertain at dinner because Warhol had to go to John Richardson’s. That separate engagement disappointed him as well; he found it filled with old social acquaintances. The diary thus places the gallery within a crowded circuit of obligations. An opening did not end at the exhibition door but fed into dinners and further gatherings, each with its own expectations and judgments.

A Retrospective He Disliked

On November 21, 1981, Warhol returned to Castelli Gallery for a 4 p.m. retrospective of his prints. The day had already involved travel from Toronto, customs, and a return to the office by one o’clock. He was also trying to arrange the evening: after T.T. Wachtmeister agreed that Jon Gould could accompany him to a dinner for the king of Sweden, Warhol called Gould, who was unsure whether he wanted to go. The gallery opening therefore arrived amid practical arrangements and Warhol’s nervous anticipation about the later dinner.

Leo Castelli called to ask when Warhol would come down and wanted to show him a photograph of Warhol by Hans Namuth. Warhol thought the photograph had turned out beautifully, but his response to the exhibition was bluntly negative: he hated the show. The contrast matters. A successful photograph and the presence of a familiar dealer did not make the retrospective itself satisfying. At the opening, Ethel Scull asked whether Warhol remembered her, adding another brief social encounter to an evening whose central exhibition left him dissatisfied.

Two Exhibitions, One Continuous Opening

On January 9, 1982, Castelli Gallery hosted what Warhol described as a double opening: Dollar Signs at the Greene Street gallery and Reversals at the West Broadway gallery. The two shows extended the event across separate spaces. Warhol noted the attendance of Bob Rauschenberg, Joseph Beuys, and Hans Namuth, and described the gathering as recalling a busy day in the sixties. His observation joined the present opening to an earlier artistic milieu without suggesting that the two moments were identical.

The gallery’s arrangement shaped Warhol’s own role in the event. He found the stairs the best place to stand, where he could watch people and sign things. From there he moved over to the Greene Street exhibition, where, as he put it, the heavyweights had gathered. James Rosenquist, unsure what to say, told Warhol that he loved Warhol’s photograph. The diary records the opening through these small exchanges and movements: where Warhol stood, when he crossed to the other show, and how visitors approached him. The gallery was at once a display space and a setting in which the artist himself was seen, greeted, and asked to perform the familiar business of signing.

The following morning supplied a quiet counterpoint to the opening’s crowded rooms. Warhol noted that not one person called all morning; eventually, at 12:45, his brother phoned. The contrast does not establish that the gallery caused the silence, but it captures the abrupt change between a night of public attention and an ordinary morning without it. In these entries, the opening’s social abundance is temporary, and the diary is attentive to what follows when the crowd disperses.

Castelli in Warhol’s Wider Working World

The diary also places the gallery in the orbit of Leo Castelli’s relationships with artists and with Warhol’s magazine, Interview. At a surprise lunch for Castelli at the Odeon, rather than at the gallery, Warhol gave him underwear and a handkerchief decorated with dollar signs; Castelli loved the gifts. Warhol had brought copies of Interview, but others told him to put them away because an interview in the magazine had featured Castelli’s girlfriend, Laura de Coppet. According to those present, Castelli’s wife, Toiny, saw the interview, became angry, tore up his ticket to Rome, and the couple had a major fight.

That episode belongs to the social network around the gallery, not to a scene inside it. It nevertheless clarifies the close overlap between Warhol’s artistic and editorial activities and Castelli’s personal world. Read alongside the exhibitions, it shows why Castelli Gallery recurs in the diary as more than a room containing paintings: it anchors a larger network of artistic presentation, recognition, favors, and entanglements.