Up: [[Blue Box]] Created: 2024-07-13 Updated: 2025-02-18 Warhol’s 610 boxes, many of them the standard cardboard box, sound like the equivalent of our junk drawers. The difference, unsurprising from the guy who made Campbell Soup Cans famous, is that Warhol saw his junk drawers as art, calling them Time Capsules. The Time Capsules are compilations of everyday materials from magazines to unpaid bills, legal documents to personal correspondence, artworks done by Warhol or his friends to newspaper clippings. Warhol didn’t actually compile most of these boxes, his studio assistants did. Putting things in the open boxes scattered throughout Warhol’s office and studio was a job, like sweeping the floor of those rooms was a job. Warhol contributed items, and would very occasionally move things from one box to another, but he didn’t actually like going through them after they were filled because doing so felt like going back in time. Warhol’s original intent was to sell the boxes as artwork, each one for $4000, to be bought sight unseen so you had no idea of the contents. But the boxes were never sold and the entire collection is now at the Warhol Museum. Archivists appreciate that Warhol was diligent about documenting his life. From the time capsules and from his detailed daily logs, they have learned more about Warhol as a person; have better context for some of Warhol’s larger artworks, and can see how Warhol borrowed ideas from the culture around him and made them his own. > [!User] Images from Warhol's boxes in this AGO article > [What’s in a Box?](https://ago.ca/agoinsider/whats-box) #### My Thoughts When I first found out about Warhol’s Time Capsules, I thought it was nuts. It would be like me saving the contents of my paper recycling bin. It’s exactly the same thing, the only difference being that I’m not famous. But then I read Annie Ernaux’s Nobel prize-winning book, *The Years* and I can see that there’s value in providing context of a period of time in one’s life. My paper recycling bins would do that. Warhol’s context would be broader than would interest me because he had multiple boxes that were being filled at any given time and he was moving stuff around. I include context for every dream that I write up because dreams are often related to events in our waking life. Lots of context is provided through my daily Hearth notes, at least in terms of what I’m doing in my own life — what I’m working on, who I’m talking with, how much sleep I’m getting. That sort of thing. I almost never write context of what’s happening in society. I’ve just never been particularly interested in that sort of thing. Do I need to rethink that? What would be valuable to have in my [[Blue Box]]? I guess it depends on who I see as an intended audience/reader? Universities buy artist boxes in large part to have a slice of life from a particular time period. But my interest is my inner life. Will anyone care about that and how much context do they need?