ANDY WARHOL, TORSO (DOUBLE), CA. 1982, © THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, INC.

It’s been nearly 30 years since The Andy Warhol Museum opened its doors. You’d be forgiven, then, for thinking that the institution would have nothing new to show from its namesake, who died in 1987.

But with 10,000 items in the collection, it turns out it still has plenty of work to share for the first time.

In 2022, Patrick Moore, the museum’s director of six years, learned that approximately 200 pieces had never been shown before, at the museum or elsewhere. “It got me thinking as to why — and what would be interesting.”

With the support of director of archives Matt Gray and independent researcher Signe Watson, Moore curated a selection of more than 60 pieces to make up the museum’s latest exhibit, “Unseen: Permanent Collection Works,” which runs through March 4.

The exhibit begins with a blank red canvas from one of Warhol’s early dealers, Irving Blum, that Moore describes as “a particular kind of mystery [that’s] a signature for the show.” Blum received the painting alongside 10 “Silver Liz” paintings of Elizabeth Taylor, and when he asked Warhol about the intention behind it, Warhol was evasive, leaving Blum unsure what to make of it. The museum didn’t know either.

Other sections of the show are not always as opaque, so to speak. There’s a selection of portraits distorted through color inversions, fragmentations or probable mistakes. For instance, the mouth of a Palm Beach socialite is missing by way of an incomplete screen-printing transfer. Then there’s an unfinished, melancholic self-portrait that, Moore says, pointing out a footprint, “wasn’t particularly precious because somebody actually stepped on it.”

ANDY WARHOL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN (ALPHANSO PANELL), 1975, © THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, INC.

Another section features multiple experimentations and riffs. Most striking are trial proofs for Warhol’s “Ladies and Gentlemen” commission. The series focused on transgender women of color who had few means, a stark contrast to an exhibit (and museum, for that matter) all but dedicated to the rich and famous. The proofs isolate color blocks that overlay the portrait of their subject, a woman named Iris — a brown mask-like block for her face, a blue rectangle for the area around her eye, a pink strip that would cover her shoulder — and follow what Moore sees as a progression of experimentation.

In contrast is a screen test of Jane Holzer who does little more than blink over the course of a few minutes — but is somehow irresistible while she does so. The video is part of an ongoing effort to digitize what Moore estimates to be a million feet of film shot by Warhol.

Art exhibits are, of course, not just about the artist(s) and their work, but about the curator as well. Moore’s life as a gay man in New York City is a recurring influence on his choices regarding Warhol’s work.

“I see the 1980s as this sort of wonderland in New York, but also the worst of times because all of my friends were dying of AIDS,” he says. He is drawn to moments of unintentional foreshadowing, such as a pale portrait of one of Warhol’s dealers, who later died of AIDS. “That kind of ghostly quality is quite resonant.”

Since a review is also about the reviewer, I will say that the most-nearly-honest piece of Warhol’s that I’ve ever seen can be found in the adults-only section of the exhibit. The black and white print, “Torso,” is of an unnamed naked woman. Though she is without pubic hair (hence the “nearly” qualifier), the image maintains — the coloring almost accentuates — what appear to be stretch marks and/or cellulite along her hips and thighs.

The rest of the section speaks less to a middle-aged woman and more to Warhol as a gay man living during the height of the Sexual Revolution, which, Moore says, he was unable to fully participate in because of both his fragility and fame. Rather than living among his peers on Christopher Street, Warhol instead captured that world in the studio.

Some of these pieces are “really graphically beautiful, powerful and they do capture the feeling of New York during the Sexual Revolution,” says Moore. Their inclusion speaks to societal changes since 1994, when the museum opened. Even though work from the “Sex Parts” series has been previously shown at the museum, none of them were as graphic as prints such as “Fellatio.”

Moore says, “The Warhol is probably the most queer-friendly museum in the world.” For decades, though, “there was still a reluctance to show highly sexual work. This is who Warhol was: he was an out gay man, so it’s super important for us to embrace that.”