Andy Warhol's Time Capsules

Andy Warhol's Time Capsules were a collection of boxes that Warhol took to his office and contemplated keeping or selling. A diary entry from September 30, 1986, captures the tension at the heart of the project: opening the boxes was enjoyable, but some of their contents were hard to give up. Warhol also revised his estimate of their value, moving from $100 to a hoped-for $4,000 or $5,000 per box. The entry documents the intention and the new asking figure, not a sale.

Boxes at the Office

On September 30, 1986, Warhol brought a few of the time-capsule boxes to the office. He described going through them as fun, while acknowledging that there were things inside he did not want to part with. The diary does not identify the individual contents, explain how many boxes existed, or say that the boxes were opened on this particular visit; its emphasis is on the pleasure of revisiting them and the difficulty of relinquishing what they held.

The office had changed in meaning during Warhol’s working life. The Factory moved in 1968 from its East 47th Street loft to a space on Union Square West, and in 1974 moved again, to the third floor of 860 Broadway. Around that second move, Warhol dropped “Factory” as the office’s telephone greeting, calling the name too corny; the workplace was simply “the office.” The diary’s later reference to bringing the boxes there places them within the working environment Warhol had come to identify by that more ordinary name.

An Archive in a Working World

By 1975, Warhol had bought out Peter Brant to become sole owner and publisher of Interview, with Fred Hughes as president. Warhol, previously relatively detached from the magazine’s daily operations, began visiting to review layouts and meet prospective advertisers. The office was thus a site of active business as well as creative and social exchange. The time-capsule entry gives no specific account of how the boxes related to Interview or to that work, but it records Warhol bringing them into this practical, commercial setting rather than describing them only as objects kept in private.

Attachment and Appraisal

Warhol’s estimate changed dramatically: he had once thought the boxes might sell for $100 apiece, but now considered $4,000 or $5,000 a more appropriate price. The revised figure turns the boxes into prospective sale objects, while his reluctance to give up some of their contents registers an attachment that valuation could not simply resolve. The diary leaves both impulses in view—the enjoyment of looking through the boxes and the possibility of converting them into money—without saying that Warhol ultimately sold them.