The opening of Andy Warhol: Myths on September 15, 1981, became a study in the gap between staging an art-world event and commanding public attention. Andy Warhol arrived at Ron Feldman’s gallery by limousine to find a crowd of young visitors, but the evening’s larger spectacle was elsewhere: Studio 54’s reopening drew a crush of people, while Truman Capote’s collapse attracted the television crews the gallery never received. The exhibition’s afterlife also brought a conflict over whether the series would be presented whole or reduced to its most marketable images.

The Opening at Ron Feldman’s Gallery

Ron Feldman arranged a limousine to bring Warhol to the gallery on the day of the opening. Jon Gould said he had to attend a video convention but would try to come; John Reinhold and Wilson Kidde were expected. At the office, Rupert Smith appeared in an outfit that made him look, to Warhol, like either his son or the artist himself: a bow tie, white shirt, blue blazer, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. When Warhol stared at the resemblance, Smith became embarrassed and changed the bow tie to a long one.

The gallery was crowded when Warhol arrived. He emphasized the age of the visitors as much as their number: the people there seemed so young that nobody was over twenty-one. That detail gives the opening a distinct audience, but it also sets the scene against the older, celebrity-filled company Warhol would encounter later that night.

A Night Divided Between Obligations

The opening was not the only demand on Warhol’s evening. Chris Makos complained that he was lonely and that Warhol was not taking him to parties. Warhol said he could not bring anyone to the dinner Halston had invited him to, and Makos left in anger, driving away in his car. The episode placed a personal grievance beside the night’s social arrangements: access to parties and invitations mattered, but Warhol’s commitments were already shaped by whom a host would allow him to bring.

Before Studio 54 reopened, Warhol went to dinner at Halston’s. Halston had wanted to give Steve Rubell a party, but Rubell said Calvin Klein was already giving one. Halston then asked Rubell to choose between them, and Rubell chose Klein. Klein subsequently called Halston with an invitation, smoothing over the slight. Warhol rode with Halston to the Sovereign and then went up to Klein’s penthouse, where Brooke Shields and about seventy-five models were among the guests, alongside Jack Nicholson. The opening’s crowd of young visitors thus gave way to a second gathering organized around celebrity, fashion, and social reconciliation.

The Reopening Overshadows the Exhibition

Warhol went on to Studio 54 and found the street more mobbed than he had ever seen it. The contrast was immediate: the club’s crowd made his art opening seem deserted by comparison. At twenty-five dollars a head, the packed venue appeared to be making a fortune; leaving at a quarter to three took fifteen minutes. The scale and duration of the crowd supplied a blunt measure of the attention concentrated on the club that night.

The gallery also missed the television coverage Warhol thought it was supposed to receive. On Monday, Capote had called and spoken in a manner Warhol found disjointed, saying he had died twice and that his brain had stopped for thirty-two seconds; he was considering Thirty-two Seconds as a title for his next book. On Tuesday evening Capote collapsed in the lobby of United Nations Plaza. Newspapers and television reporters rushed there, and his hospitalization became front-page news. Warhol believed the coverage that might have gone to the Feldman Gallery had instead followed Capote’s medical emergency; the television crews never came to the opening.

Dispute Over the Myths Series

The opening did not settle how the exhibition would be presented. On October 5, Warhol fought with Ron Feldman by phone because Feldman did not want to take the entire Myths series, preferring only the specific images that were selling best. Warhol objected to this selection and ended up yelling, which he disliked doing on the phone. The disagreement turned the question of the exhibition’s completeness into a conflict over sales: the choice of individual images could privilege what sold best over the series as a whole.

The reception also remained unsettled in the weeks after the opening. Warhol noted that The New York Times still had not reviewed the Myths show and felt it was being ignored. Set beside the young crowd at the gallery, the absent television crews, and the later dispute about selecting only commercially successful images, that silence shows how attendance, publicity, critical notice, and control of the work did not necessarily arrive together.