What a week last week turned out to be! The impressive Money on the Wall–Andy Warhol exhibition opened on Friday, 18th October at Stockholm’s Spritmuseum. The official opening was preceded by a preview and dinner for those involved in the production on the Tuesday and a massive party for fans of the museum on the Thursday before the opening.

Let me tell you something about Spritmuseum. Absolut Vodka was a Swedish vodka product owned by the Swedish Vin & Sprit company until it was bought by the Pernod Ricard Group in 2008. Absolut Vodka had since 1985 engaged artists to make artworks “celebrating” Absolut Vodka. The first artist to do this was none other than Andy Warhol, who painted two large canvasses featuring the classic Absolut bottle (more about these later.) Warhol suggested that Keith Haring do the following year’s work and the Absolut Art Collection was born. It now includes 850 works.

The Art Collection was not included in the sale of Absolut Vodka to the Pernod Ricard Group and a home was needed for it and the building on Djurgården, between the famous Vasa Museum and what has become the Viking Museum was chosen as the new Spritmuseum, not only housing the Absolut Art Collection but also a permanent exhibition of the hustory of alcohol drinking in Sweden.Spritmuseum’s artostoc director is Mia Sundberg, who has curated many exciting shows and I have been a regular visitor to exhibitions at Sprituseum that she has curated or organised. The Andy Warhol “portrait” of the Absolut Vodka bottle has been a regular feature in many of these exhibitions.

A couple of years ago Mia Sundberg and an associate found the second, “lost” Warhol version of the Absolut bottle in a garage. This find prompted the idea of a major exhibition of Andy Warhol’s art at Spritmuseum to show the new, blue version for the first time.

Mia Sundberg suggested that Blake Gopnik, author of the 2020 definitive Warhol biography curate the exhibition. He suggested “art as business” as a theme for the exhibition starting from Warhol’s expressed interest in money both as a subject for his art and as a business.

Mia Sundberg contaced me a few months ago and asked if the museum could borrow twelve of my Warhol record covers and I provided her with a list of possible covers to choose from. I promised to deliver the selected covers when the time came and three weeks before the opening I took the tram ot to Djurgården and delivered them.

A week or so later, I got an email from Mia asking for six more covers. That caused a problem–all my other Warhol covers are in Linköping, a town two hour’s drive from Stockholm, being stored before travelling to a new Warhol exhibition in Borås next year. So, I had to get on a train and collect the six covers and deliver them ASAP. Here are all the covers I have lent to Spritmuseum:

In the end, the Rolling Stones promotional seve-inch and the RATFAB seven-inch were not included in the exhibiiton.

I had the honour/great good fortune to be seated beside Blake Gopnik at the preview dinner and we had a fascinating discussion. He kindly offfered to sign my copy of his Warhol biography.

I also asked him to sign the exhibition poster together with Mia Sundberg. Her signature, unfortunately, is difficult to see..

Money on the Wall is an impressive exhibition that runs until 27th April 2025. It’s really one of the better Warhol shows I’ve seen.