University of Maryland

The University of Maryland enters Andy Warhol’s diary through a June 1982 visit to Baltimore for the presentation of his portraits of ten sports figures. The campus visit also produced a startling personal discovery: Warhol learned there that Valerie Solanas had graduated from the university, a fact he had not known.

Portrait Presentation

Warhol traveled from New York to Baltimore on June 8 to see Fred Weisman, Richard Weisman’s father, present Warhol’s portraits of ten sports figures to the University of Maryland. The diary identifies the university as the destination for the presentation but does not specify how the portraits would be displayed or whether the institution formally acquired them.

An Unexpected Campus Connection

On arrival, a woman ran up to Warhol and asked how it felt to be at the school Valerie Solanas had graduated from. He records that he had never heard of her connection to the university. The encounter joined the institution’s campus identity to a piece of Warhol’s own history, delivered not through the presentation but through a passing remark from someone there.

The Visit and Its Reception

Warhol was photographed and invited to the university president’s house. He and his companions walked across campus to join a small group for conversation, an engagement he described as boring. Afterward, he took the shuttle back to New York, arriving at 3:45 p.m. In the diary, the university is thus both a site for presenting his work and the setting for a short, formally arranged visit whose most memorable moment was an unanticipated disclosure.