Brandywine River Museum is the setting for a 1979 visit that moves between a museum outing and a social gathering of artists, public figures, and patrons in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The diary presents the museum not through a description of its collections but through the people who arrive there, meet one another, and bring their histories into the room—including young guests who remember Andy Warhol from a visit with Edie Sedgwick two decades earlier.

A destination in Chadds Ford

On September 15, Suzie Frankfurt collected the party in a limousine borrowed from one of her decorating clients. In fine weather, they went straight to Brandywine River Museum, then continued to Frolic Weymouth’s house. The day’s itinerary linked the museum with nearby private homes, making the visit part of a larger round of hospitality rather than an account confined to the galleries.

A gathering place

The diary also locates a gathering, with drinks, photographs, and dinner, at the museum. Frolic Weymouth introduced Andy Warhol to Governor Scranton and his wife, among others. At the table, Marina Schiano and Jed Johnson changed their place cards so they could sit beside each other. Warhol sat between Nancy Hanks, head of the National Endowment for the Arts, and Bonny Wintersteen, the sister of Henry McIlhenny. Hanks had placed Jamie Wyeth on the National Council on the Arts advisory committee. Wintersteen, meanwhile, recalled selling her ten most famous paintings to Japanese buyers when prices were high; she had grown tired of visitors turning up at her house to demand to see them. The juxtaposition of public arts institutions, private collecting, and dinner-table maneuvering gives the museum gathering its particular social texture.

Earlier visits and recognition

Among the young guests in black tie, several told Warhol they had met him twenty years before, when he and Edie Sedgwick came to the University of Pennsylvania for his show. Their recollection gives the museum occasion a long reach into Warhol’s personal history: a new introduction in a room full of notable guests is interrupted by recognition from an earlier generation of encounters. The party left at about 10:30, and Warhol fell asleep in the car.