More than 130 Andy Warhol works to feature at Milton Keynes Gallery in celebration of venue’s 25th anniversary

Andy Warhol: Portrait of America is set to run at the gallery on Midsummer Boulevard from March 15 to June 29 2025.

The exhibition is due to feature more than 130 of Warhol’s artworks, including the Marilyn series, which are screen print portraits of actress Marilyn Monroe, plus two paintings of British art duo Gilbert & George, who were the focus of the gallery’s first ever exhibition in 1999.

Portrait of America features an exhibition of work from the 1950s through to the 1980s, including early drawings, painted silkscreens and photographic series.

Images of Warhol, Monroe and Liz Taylor feature alongside icons of American consumerism, and symbols of guns, skulls and war, in recognition of Warhol’s fascination with mortality.

The exhibition is an Artist Rooms partnership exhibition with the Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, and will be coming to Milton Keynes Gallery just under 25 years since Andy Warhol: Cars was shown in the city in 2001.

Five things you might not know about Andy Warhol

ONE The son of Slovakian immigrants, he was born in Pittsburgh and named Andrew Warhola. He later dropped the “a” in Warhola to make it sound more “American.”

TWO He was raised Byzantine Catholic and regularly attended mass for most of his life. He even had an audience with the Pope.

THREE He was the first in his family to go to college, at what is now known as Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he studied pictorial design.

FOUR In 1956 the Museum of Modern Art in New York rejected Warhol’s offer to donate one of his shoe drawings after the museum included it—or one very similar—in an exhibition.

FIVE Warhol’s first public display of Pop paintings was in the department store windows of New York’s Bonwit Teller in April 1961.