It still surprises some people to learn that Andy Warhol, the quintessential '60s New York City Pop Art star, was born and raised in Pittsburgh.

But that explains why The Andy Warhol Museum -- the largest and most comprehensive single-artist museum in the world -- is here, a block up on the left once you have crossed the Andy Warhol Bridge, formerly known as the Seventh Street Bridge.

The seven-story, white tile-fronted museum at 117 Sandusky St. occupies what was most recently the Volkwein Music and Instruments Co. Renovated by New York architect Richard Gluckman, the museum opened May 13, 1994.

While there was consideration given after Warhol's death in 1987 to establishing the museum in New York, the Big Apple's loss is Pittsburgh's gain. Aside from a fabulous display of the artist's work from the permanent collection -- including famed pieces like his Campbell's soup can paintings and Marilyn (Monroe) portraits -- the museum features contemporaries of Warhol, younger artists influenced by him, and, in the words of museum director Thomas Sokolowski, "a [changing] focused exhibition on some unknown or even bizarre aspect of Warhol's life."

Certainly the mythology surrounding his life -- some of it self-originated -- can seem bizarre.

At his death, the world learned that the party-going pop star lived in a traditionally furnished, antique- and collectible-filled townhouse into which he rarely invited people.

Museum assistant archivist Matt Wrbican has seen Cleveland, Philadelphia, McKeesport and Honolulu attributed as Warhol's place of birth, and he's heard rumors that Warhol never graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. (Warhol did graduate, in 1949, with a BFA in painting and design.) Warhol also shaved years off his age, saying he was born between 1930 and 1932, while the actual year was 1928.

Entering the museum, you first encounter the world of celebrity glamour that Warhol became identified with in his later years. Rows of his brightly colored, stylized silkscreen portraits hang frozen in perpetual gaze, including familiar members of the international glitterati, but also his mother Julia Warhola (done in 1974) and his well-known, wildly wigged self-portrait of 1986.

Across from this gallery is the museum theater, where 16-mm films made by Warhol are shown daily.

The museum's permanent collection -- about 25 percent of it on display at any given time -- is arranged in a loose chronology corresponding to Warhol's life but, like the man it represents, it's not predictable.

"Because of the lively nature of Warhol's life, nothing is static," Sokolowski says. So there's a continual shifting of works from the collection -- to different locations to form new associations with other pieces, or into storage so that others may be brought out.

But the important pieces will always be on view, he says.

Among these are drawings and commercial work from the 1950s, when Warhol worked as an illustrator and window designer for some of the most important department stores in New York, where he'd moved after college.

You can find these on the fifth floor, a good starting place for your museum tour.

Warhol was very successful as a commercial artist before he became known as a fine artist, and you can see how adept he was in drawing, whether fashion illustrations like those for I. Miller shoes that solidified his reputation, erotic male nudes (Warhol was openly homosexual) or fanciful works like an elongated purple horse surrounded by chicks and butterflies.

In an adjacent gallery are items from Warhol's Pop period, such as those globally recognized soup can paintings of the early 1960s. In the same gallery are stacks of Brillo, Heinz and Del Monte boxes, all created in 1964.

Also on this floor you'll find one of the museum's most popular exhibits, the Silver Cloud room, where you can interact with pillow-shaped helium-filled balloons made of metalized plastic film. To get there, you'll pass between walls of Cow Wallpaper, which reference bucolic landscapes of times past but jar those memories with fuchsia and chartreuse brightness and the mass-produced repetitiveness Warhol promoted.

In the mid-1960s, he announced that he was no longer interested in painting and wasn't going to paint anymore. In 1966, his exhibition at the prestigious Leo Castelli Gallery included the "Cow Wallpaper" and the "Silver Clouds" -- and no paintings.

On the fourth floor, "Mao Wallpaper," featuring the face of the late Chinese leader, covers the walls, overhung with silkscreens and paintings of Mao. The wallpaper was created for Warhol's 1974 exhibition at the Musee Galliera in Paris, where artworks were similarly hung over a wallpapered background.

Sokolowski says there will always be a display of the contents of one of Warhol's more than 600 "Time Capsules" -- boxes into which the artist tossed items ranging from artwork to correspondence and bills, sealing them when they filled up.

These time capsules are part of the Archives Study Center on the third floor, where small changing exhibitions give order to Warhol's pack-rat-like accumulation of memorabilia.

The huge archives the museum inherited add to its uniqueness, and to its ability to expand upon the understanding of Warhol's life and times. Archival objects are less glitzy than the artworks and have a lower profile, but peering over these materials has the voyeuristic appeal of reading Warhol's diaries.

You can flip through current issues of the celebrity/art "Interview" magazine, begun by Warhol, or check out the rows of past covers displayed on a side wall.

Archival items are displayed in wall cases on most of the floors. Those on the third floor are from Warhol's early years, including family photographs.

Occasionally a work may be out of the building, so if you can't locate something you want to see, ask one of the young guards -- they're trained and enthusiastic.

"If someone's favorite treasure is missing," it could be that it's in one of the five to 10 exhibitions traveling at any time throughout the world, Sokolowski says.

Floors six and seven are used for special exhibitions, some of them brought in from elsewhere, and floor two holds permanent collection works by Warhol or collaborations.

If you have time and energy, it's worth taking a quick run through each floor. They're relatively small, and you might stumble across something stunning.

To recharge, sip a cup of coffee, an 8-ounce Coke from a shapely green bottle like those Warhol portrayed, or have a light meal while relaxing on a cowhide-upholstered banquette in the cafe. It's on the lower level, dubbed the Underground by the staff after the Warhol-created rock band Velvet Underground, just past the (working) photo booth that's like those Warhol frequented.

Or browse the snazziest gift shop you're likely to find in a museum, which goes beyond the usual postcards and books, though you'll find those, too, including Andy's Diaries and his philosophy. Warhol images are printed on T-shirts and tote bags, switch plates and hot water bottles. For the hard-to-please, you'll find a Warhol collector doll, Elvis playing cards, Keith Haring flip books and virgin/slut lip balm.

The hip and fringe crowd show up on "Good Fridays" (weekly), when half-priced admission is charged 5 until 10 p.m., there's a cash bar, and the events have ranged from bands to panels and lectures to a flea market.

If you happen to be in town Aug. 6, you can join the annual Andy Warhol birthday celebration, or, the month before, sit in on the yearly screening of "Empire" --Warhol's eight-hour look at the Empire State Building, shown in its entirety around the dates it was shot, July 25-26 (1964).

Warhol experienced considerably more than the "15 minutes of fame" he's famous for having predicted everyone would receive, but it was still unexpectedly early when his light went out. Having survived being shot by a disgruntled groupie, Valerie Solanas, in 1968, he died at age 58 after routine gall bladder surgery in 1987.

The famous son, born Andrew Warhola in 1928, was brought back to Pittsburgh for burial, and his body lies on an otherwise nondescript hillside in St. John the Baptist Byzantine Cemetery in Bethel Park, south of the city, beneath a modest headstone.

But with a museum like the Warhol as a memorial, he doesn't really need a mausoleum.

The Warhol is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays, until 10 p. m. Fridays.

Admission is $10, $7 for senior citizens, $6 for students and children over 3. It's half-price from 5-10 p.m. Fridays and for members. Information: 412-237-8300 or www.warhol.org.

	MID-TOWN		PNC PARK / HEINZ FIELD