Andy Warhol exhibit recalls impostor's trip to U.

Editor's note: The Utah Museum of Fine Arts is hosting the exhibit "Andy Warhol's Dream America" through Sunday. The exhibit features nearly 100 of Warhol's screen prints — and recalls some of the story that follows.

Andy Warhol was coming to the University of Utah.

The date was Oct. 2, 1967, and I was editorial assistant on the Daily Utah Chronicle, the U.'s student newspaper. Warhol at the time was a revolutionary artist, a man who was turning convention on its head, the creator of fabulous silk screen prints of JFK and Marilyn Monroe, the Campbell Soup can painter, the director of strange underground films.

Warhol's visit was big news — bigger than the antiwar demonstrations and the protests against tuition hikes that I had been covering.

It was even bigger than the arrival of the vice president, Hubert Humphrey, which I also had covered — sort of — a year before. During a press conference at the airport, I had started to ask Humphrey a question, identifying myself as J. Bauman of the Daily Utah Chronicle. At that moment, in front of hundreds who had gone to the airport to welcome him, in front of Gov. Cal Rampton, Boy Scouts, high school majorettes and band members, and of course TV and print reporters, a reel of my tape recorder flopped off. I bent over and scrambled to retrieve the reel, which just kept unrolling along the tarmac, tape stretching behind.

Not missing a beat, Humphrey had said, "Yes, J.," and patted me on the head.

This time I was going to do it right. I was armed with a complimentary ticket to Warhol's lecture, "Pop Art in Action," and my Mamiya C-3 twin-lens reflex camera. I got a ride to the airport so I could interview him on the way back. And I planned to take a close-up that "the Chrony" could use.

Looking back over 40 years,

among my memory gaps are how I got the ride and how we returned. I have a feeling that the people who ran the Lectures and Concerts Series at the U. had sent a limo to pick up Warhol, and I had hitched a ride with them. Or maybe taxicabs were invoked.

I do recall two events at the airport: first, a cloud of white dust blew off Warhol's hair, which I took to be powder he had sprinkled on as decoration; second, someone with him insisted that I absolutely could not take a photograph. Warhol was far too shy.

You could tell he was shy by his silence, by his vague, evasive murmur if I asked a question, by the dark sunglasses he wore.