Anyone who’s been wondering whom, after Picasso, the Museum of Modern Art holds in highest esteem now has his answer. It is Andy Warhol, at least if exhibition space is any guide. Warhol, whose retrospective opened at the museum in February, was accorded more space than any other artist since the Modern turned the entire museum over to Picasso in 1980.¹ Barring a nook set aside for an architectural exhibition, the Warhol show filled every inch of temporary exhibition space and more. It took up both main floor and basement galleries and the small “Projects” area used to show emerging artists, and overflowed into public spaces as well. Though Warhol’s helium-filled pillows were removed from the entrance hall after the opening festivities, the cafeteria and the hallway leading into it were still festooned with his bovine wallpaper. You had to want to see Warhol pretty badly. The only place to avoid him, aside from the permanent collection galleries upstairs, was the bathroom.

The Roman scale of the event was reflected in the high opinion of Warhol voiced by Kynaston McShine, senior curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art and organizer of the retrospective. For him, Warhol is “one of the most serious and . . . important artists of the twentieth century,” a view heard these days from almost everyone who likes Warhol. Death changes the way we look at an artist. Rodin’s reputation, mythic during his lifetime, plummeted as soon as he