A New York City auction house is poised to not only set a record price for an Andy Warhol artwork tonight, but perhaps even double the previous record Warhol sale, set only six months ago.

	"Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)" by Andy Warhol, circa 1963 Click photo for larger image.

The estimated sales price for 1963's "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)" -- $35 million -- says great things about the enduring legacy of Pittsburgh's most famous artist. But it also stokes the fear of money-strapped public museums that they are getting priced out of the exploding contemporary art market.

"The sad thing is, we've come to point where unless someone literally donates a Warhol like that to a museum like mine -- or the Museum of Modern Art or the Tate -- we as public institutions can't afford to buy these pictures," said Tom Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum on the North Side.

"At least if something's in my museum it's seen by 100,000 a year -- if it's in the Museum of Modern Art, a couple of million. If it's just owned by some Park Avenue, soigne titan of industry, they may enjoy it, but not the world," he said.

Prices for Impressionist, contemporary and post World War II art have been going through the roof -- New York auction houses sold more than $1 billion last fall alone -- and works by Pittsburgh-native Mr. Warhol are among those leading the way.

His 1963 "Green Car Crash" is the jewel of the auction at Christie's New York tonight. Its estimated $25 million to $35 million sales price is expected to dwarf the previous Warhol record sale of $17.4 million, for a 1972 "Mao" in November.

In promotional materials Christie's says the work "has been considered the Holy Grail by a legion of contemporary art collectors." That praise and tonight's expected sales record are due to a few related factors: the piece has been in private hands for three decades; it is large, at 90 by 80 inches; it is one of the first silkscreens produced from Mr. Warhol's "factory" style with the help of assistant Gerard Malanga; and it is one of a relative few from his important "Death and Disaster" series.

The green silkscreen painting uses a 1963 "Newsweek" photo of a car crash in suburban Seattle, in which the driver was flung from the car and impaled on a utility pole climbing spike.

Carnegie Museum of Art contemporary art curator and Carnegie International 2008 curator Douglas Fogle also curated a show including the artist's death and disaster paintings for the Walker Art Center in 2005. He said they represent some of Mr. Warhol's best social criticism.

"You can think about Goya's 'Disasters of War' back in the early 19th century, which were a critique of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain -- these are disasters in their own strange, similar way. They are disasters of the American landscape of car crashes, that ultimate American consumer disaster," he said.

In the eyes of art historians and collectors, Mr. Warhol's importance has risen over the past several years. "There is a direct trajectory from Marcel Duchamp through Warhol to artists working today," said Mr. Fogle. "In many ways Warhol is what Johns and Rauschenberg were seen as 20 years ago."

In a phone interview, Christie's Robert Manley, head of tonight's Postwar and Contemporary Art evening sale, said "demand for these breakthrough, influential pictures from this period have gotten more and more frenzied. The owner, I think, has wisely chosen to sell at auction, where in a competitive environment, it should realize the highest possible price."

He said there is a raft of reasons why contemporary art prices are so high, from the entrance of Chinese and Russian collectors into the market, to readily available auction information on the Internet.