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# How Will We Know If Our Warhols Are Real?!
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/warhol-authentication-board-gone/
- Published: 2011-10-20T00:38:29.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:48:35.000Z
- Description: The Warhol Foundation is dissolving it's Warhol Authentification Board, Inc. According to Warhol Foundation president Joel Wachs, the: " … decision was driven by the financial toll the board's operations have taken on the institution has a whole."
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: News, #image-position-hidden, Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Auctions, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-11-17 09:23 (2009-2011)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2011/10/hargo-cash-warhol-home.jpg "hargo-cash-warhol-HOME")

Artinfo’s Julia Halperin has [the story](http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/38912/warhol-authentication-board-to-dissolve-due-to-millions-of-dollars-in-legal-fees/?ref=hyperallergic.com) of why the Warhol Foundation is dissolving it’s Warhol Authentification Board, Inc. According to Warhol Foundation president Joel Wachs, the:

> … decision was driven by the financial toll the board’s operations have taken on the institution has a whole. Consisting of five scholars and curators who meet three times a year to consider submissions, the board costs approximately $500,000 a year to operate. But it was the legal fees from lawsuits over works rejected by the board that ultimately made it untenable, according to Wachs. “I don’t want to spend $7 million a year on lawyers,” he said, referring to the amount paid by the foundation last year toward defending itself.

How will we know if our Warhols are real!? The [WSJ](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204618704576641623099797998.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) gives us a sense of the scope of the Warhol market:

> The Pittsburgh-born artist created about 8,000 paintings and sculptures between 1952 and his death in 1987, and they turn up at auction so consistently — about 200 works a year — that they have become a bellwether for the entire $25 billion art market.

As [we noted](https://hyperallergic.com/warhol-is-the-art-market/) a little while ago, an Artactic report titled “Andy Warhol: The Art Market Zeitgeist” states that Warhol constitutes 17% of the contemporary art auction market.

*Image: Hargo’s “*[*Cash for Your Warhol*](http://www.flickr.com/photos/hargadon/4297710268/?ref=hyperallergic.com)*: Miami series” (2008)*