• by Fern Siegel , Yesterday

Pop Art master Andy Warhol, influenced by his Byzantine Catholic upbringing and the religious iconography in his childhood, was intrigued by death. So it's not surprising that Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum would launch “Vanitas,”  a new exhibition that runs through March 9, 2026.

A huge self-portrait of a phantasm-like Warhol greets viewers as they enter the exhibition, organized into three themes: Vanitas, Temporality and Mortality. Each illustrates Warhol’s fascination with death and the fleeting nature of beauty.

To augment the macabre exhibit, BarkleyOKRP created a campaign, which spans print, digital, OOH and influencers, as well as The Death Kit — a limited-edition art box that invites people to reframe death as a final expression of their life. The kit includes a write-your-own eulogy guidebook, design your own tombstone, a What To Do With Your Hands coffin poster, a recording for your loved ones and a heaven/hell voting paddles for families to decide where you end up.

“The Death Kit  includes various tools and prompts designed to encourage people to view death as the ultimate form of self-expression, taking Warhol’s disruptive and innovative approach to the art world and applying it to death, Berk Wasserman, executive creative director at BarkleyOKRP, told Agency Daily.

Warhol explored these themes with prints depicting skulls, extinguished candles, wilting flowers and timepieces.

“Vanitas” draws from the tradition of paintings produced during the 16th and 17th centuries in the Netherlands. They served as “memento mori” images, Latin for remember you must die.

“The line between Warhol as a person and Warhol as a work of art is thin. He took serious subjects and made them accessible and cool,” Patrick Moore, “Vanitas” curator and former Andy Warhol Museum executive director, told Pittsburgh City Paper.