Ingrid Superstar

Ingrid Superstar is remembered in Andy Warhol’s diary both as one of the figures associated with his 1960s circle and as the subject of a 1987 missing-person story. Her appearances are brief, but their contrast is striking: a reunion was meant to bring the past back within reach, just as news of her disappearance made that past feel uncertain and potentially lost.

A Figure from Warhol’s Earlier Circle

In a late-night phone call, Billy Name told Warhol that he was organizing a 1960s reunion in Poughkeepsie. He mentioned Ingrid alongside Gerard Malanga and described plans to have Warhol picked up and taken to Stephen Shore’s house, where Shore worked at Bard College. The reunion existed, in this account, as a network of people and arrangements being assembled around a shared past. Warhol, however, said he could not face that past; Ingrid was one of the people he expected the gathering to bring back into view.

Reported Missing in 1987

On February 4, 1987, Warhol read a Post story about Ingrid’s disappearance, headlined “Warhol Star Vanishes.” He had thought she would attend Billy Name’s reunion. The newspaper reported that she had gone out for a pack of cigarettes in upstate New York and had not returned. The diary preserves this as a report, not a confirmed account of what happened to her.

Warhol’s Concern and the Limits of the Record

Warhol wondered whether Gerard Malanga had alerted the papers to get his own name in the story, and noted that Brigid Berlin had not even told him that reporters had called about Ingrid. He contrasted his response to Ingrid’s disappearance with his indifference toward questions about Ivy Nicholson: for Ivy, he had told Brigid Berlin to say they had never heard of her, but he said he would have cared about Ingrid. His suspicion that something had happened to her remains unresolved in the diary; the account gives no later explanation or outcome.