Andy Warhol’s Shrunken Head
-
- October
- 14
When I saw a press release today that blasted the news that the so-called “Warhol Head” was acquired by the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum in Time Square, I thought they had the pop-artist’s actual head.
I thought, “How the hell did thet manage to get Andy Warhol’s noggin?”
Reading on, I quickly realized that it was a shrunken head that Warhol, who died from a heart attack in 1987 at the age of 58, kept as a cuddly keepsake. It’s had several owners over the years, but of course, the original “owner” was the poor Central American jungle warrior who lost it after a battle with the Jivaro Indians.
According to the Ripley people, the Jivaros “claimed the heads of enemies as symbols of bravery and displayed them…reduced to fist-size war trophies.”
Cool.
With 24 specimens—including one that belonged to Ernest Hemingway- the museum claims it has the largest collection of shrunken heads in the world. Believe it or not.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 5:24 pm by Phil Reisman.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
| 
Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
