PHOTO OF ANDY WARHOL IN THE LOBBY OF THE WARHOL MUSEUM | PHOTO BY DEAN KAUFMAN

How do you prevent the next Andy Warhol from having to leave Pittsburgh to become the next Andy Warhol?

That’s one of the missions of The Warhol museum’s two-year-old Pop District, which is providing in its Warhol Academy a robust training program for young professionals in creative and technical skills, with the aim of keeping that talent in Pittsburgh. The academy got a boost this week with the announcement that Citizens is granting another $200,000 to fund 28 new fellowships for aspiring artists in digital content creation, filmmaking and post-production. That brings to $550,000 the support from Citizens, making the banking giant the largest corporate supporter of the academy’s creative fellowships.

“This is excitement about opportunities. Excitement about our economic expansion for Pittsburgh. It’s a way of attracting and retaining people to Pittsburgh,” said Steven Knapp, president and CEO of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, the umbrella organization for The Warhol. He said by the end of this year, 600 young participants will have gone through all of the academy’s various programs since its was established in 2022.

Dan Law, who oversees the Pop District and is a 2023 40 Under 40 honoree, said the academy offers about 30 paid fellowships a year, which would bring the total offered to 84 by the end of 2024.

In a “fireside chat” Wednesday with Bruce Van Saun, chairman and CEO of Citizens, at the Pop District HQ on the North Side, Knapp said more effort is needed to better communicate the city’s strengths so young people don’t think they need to go to LA or New York — like Andy Warhol did — to succeed. “We’re often ranked among the top 10 most affordable cities for first-time homebuyers,” he said. “But if you combine that with where we are in terms of our concentration of arts and culture institutions, we’re actually No. 1 in the nation with the most affordable city with the greatest concentration of arts and culture.”

“We need to do a better job of marketing what our strengths are.”

Van Saun said all businesses are increasingly moving digital. “The way you get your word out about your products and services is through social media and digital channels….So we understand the power in creative content and making sure that we’re trying to facilitate the growth of people who have those careers.”

The $60 million Pop District initiative was launched under the leadership of Patrick Moore, who announced last week that he’ll be leaving May 31 after serving seven years as The Warhol director and vice president of the Carnegie Museums.

Rachel Baron-Horn, The Warhol deputy director, will serve as the museum’s interim director as the Carnegie Museums launches an international search to replace Moore.

Moore also helped extend the reach of The Warhol internationally by serving as curator for Warhol exhibitions in China, Saudi Arabia and The Netherlands. The Warhol estimates that more than 12 million people have seen the art and experienced what they call the pop sensibility of Andy Warhol through the museum’s traveling exhibitions and international partnerships.

The Warhol will be celebrating its 30th anniversary in May.