Students get museum tour from Warhol relative

By TAYLOR BROWN

tbrown@yourmvi.com

Charleroi Area students got a personal lesson Thursday on the early life of Andy Warhol.

Earlier this year, Charleroi Area High School social studies teacher Mary Ann Schaefer taught her class on the history of Pittsburgh from Warhol’s gravesite using her cellphone.

Not only did it take students on a makeshift field trip at a time when they aren’t able to leave campus, it landed them a scholarship from the Andy Warhol Museum for a personal tour led by Warhol’s nephew, Donald Warhola.

Warhola, who lives in Pittsburgh, was 24 when his uncle passed away, shared personal experiences and stories passed down by his family about his late uncle, who created a global name for himself for his unique art, inspired by everyday people and things.

Warhola told students that his uncle faced much adversity growing up as the son of immigrants who looked and spoke differently than most people in the region in the early 1920s.

His parents immigrated from the Carpathian Mountains, currently present-day Eastern Slovakia.

His father came to Pittsburgh in 1912 and his mother,  Julia, came to the United States in 1921.

Warhol had two older brothers, Paul and John, Warhola’s father.

“His family was very poor,” Warhola said. “And they lived with the stigma of having immigrant parents.”

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