Top 10 – Art Disasters

top 10 art disasters

10. Andy Warhol’s ’13 Most Wanted’ Destroyed At New York Worlds Fair – 1964

Andy Warhol’s most celebrated period, during the mid-1960s, included his only public work: a vast 20 by 20-foot mural entitled 13 Most Wanted Men, as part of a prominent set of public commissions for the Philip Johnson-designed New York State Pavilion’s exterior, Warhol chose to enlarge mug shots from a NYPD booklet put on display at the World’s Fair in Queens in 1964. The painting was only visible for 48 hours before it was destroyed, painted over by Fair officials’ direction with silver paint a few days later – a casualty of political censorship.

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