Hyannis, Massachusetts
The Andy Warhol DiariesHyannis, Massachusetts, is the destination in an April 26, 1986, diary entry describing a trip from New York for a church wedding. The town enters the account through a sequence of concrete scenes: a foggy flight, a rented yellow station wagon, and a crowd gathered outside the church.## The trip to HyannisThe journey began in New York, where Andy Warhol and his companions went to collect Grace Jones. They reached the airport an hour late. The flight to Hyannis passed through grey fog and, as the diary recounts, was unusually smooth. After landing, Peter rented a yellow station wagon and drove them to the church; he then went to check on his house in East Falmouth.## The church and the crowdOutside the church, a large crowd shouted for Grace Jones and Andy Warhol. The diary describes it as the biggest mob the writer had ever seen around a church. Inside, folding chairs had been set near the door, while Oprah Winfrey gave a speech and Jamie Wyeth and Phyllis Wyeth sat in front of the visitors. The gathering made the wedding a public spectacle as well as a ceremony.## The wedding dayThe service lasted an hour, while the wedding ceremony itself took fifteen minutes and included a singer performing Ave Maria. John F. Kennedy Jr. accompanied Jackie around the church after she received communion; the diary remarks on her appearance and notes that she did not smile at the onlookers. The contrast between the crowd outside and the formal service inside gives the Hyannis visit its defining shape: celebrity attention surrounding a brief, orderly ceremony.## A gift and a public performanceThe wedding was also the occasion for a portrait Andy Warhol had been drawing of Maria Shriver as a gift. Guests later told him that Arnold Schwarzenegger had presented the portrait to the Shriver family at a party the night before. Peter said that, when the newlyweds left the church, they lowered the car window, smiled, and posed for photographers. The diary’s account of Hyannis thus joins place to performance: the church and its crowd become the setting for a wedding already surrounded by gifts, cameras, and public attention.