Press Release The Warhol Museum Partners with Brillo® to Sponsor The Warhol D.I.Y. Pop App in February and March

A classic Brillo box with its red and white logo sits against a white background.

Andy Warhol, Brillo Soap Pads Box, 1964, ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

For immediate release

Monday, February 4, 2013

Andy Warhol helped make Brillo® an iconic brand in 1964 with his Brillo Soap Pads Box sculpture, and now nearly 50 years later the relationship continues. The Andy Warhol Museum partners with Brillo® to celebrate its 100 year anniversary by offering The Warhol’s popular The Warhol D.I.Y. Pop app for free during the months of February and March.

“Brillo wanted to do something special to commemorate 100 years of cleaning American households,” said John Armaly Jr., President and CEO of Armaly Brands, maker of Brillo® Soap Pads and Brillo Estracell® sponges. “The interest that Andy Warhol took in our brand back in the 60’s helped mainstream Brillo into pop culture. A partnership with The Warhol is a natural extension of introducing our brand to a new generation, while thanking our loyal consumers who have supported our products for the last century.”

Last July, The Warhol first collaborated with Brillo® on the brand’s 15 Minutes of Fame book cover contest held through social media channels. Brillo® offered artists their own chance at fame and called artists to create and submit an original cover design for a limited-edition commemorative book celebrating Brillo’s 100 year anniversary. The Warhol’s curator, Nicholas Chambers, served as one of three judges. The grand prize contest winner, Rey Borges, received a $1,000 Visa® gift card and 10 copies of the book, but more importantly, for a one month period (this month), his winning design will be loaded onto in-gallery iPads at The Warhol and displayed on the museum’s website, featured in the popular The Warhol: D.I.Y. POP mobile app and promoted via the museum’s social media channels.

Patrick Moore, deputy director of The Warhol said, “Whether you visit us at the museum or online, you will be able to engage in creating your own digital silkscreen prints. We are thrilled to reengage with Brillo and know Warhol would be proud of this partnership.”

The Brillo® boxes were but one type within a group of replicas of commonplace supermarket packaging–Del Monte peach halves, Campbell’s tomato soup, and Heinz’s ketchup–included in Warhol’s 1964 Stable Gallery show, the site of a cramped grocery warehouse.

Calling to mind a factory assembly line, Warhol employed carpenters to construct numerous plywood boxes identical in size and shape to supermarket cartons. Then, with assistance from Gerard Malanga and Billy Linich, he painted and silkscreened the boxes with logos of the different consumer products. The finished sculptures were virtually indistinguishable from their cardboard supermarket counterparts.

To download The Warhol D.I.Y. Pop app for IOS, visit

http://www.warhol.org/connect/mobile/.


The Warhol receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; and The Heinz Endowments. Further support is provided by the Allegheny Regional Asset District.

The Andy Warhol Museum

Located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the place of Andy Warhol’s birth, The Andy Warhol Museum holds the largest collection of Warhol’s artworks and archival materials and is one of the most comprehensive single-artist museums in the world. The Warhol is one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Established in 1895 by Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh is a collection of four distinctive museums: Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Science Center, and The Andy Warhol Museum. The museums reach more than 1.4 million people a year through exhibitions, educational programs, outreach activities, and special events.