Andy Warhol: A series of portraits of Mary-Jean Mitchell Green from Portraits From The Factory at the Bermuda National Gallery. (Photograph by Blaire Simmons)

Franklin Hill Perrell will share his first-hand knowledge of American artist Andy Warhol and his orbit when he speaks at the Bermuda National Gallery about its exhibition Andy Warhol: Portraits from the Factory.

Perrell is chief curator at the Nassau County Museum of Art but has a long-standing relationship with the gallery and remains an ex-officio board member.

“The gallery has never looked better,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “The two shows — the Warhol portraits and the Michael Frith retrospective — are world-class and could be shown anywhere.”

His talk tomorrow will discuss Warhol’s portraits, all produced in the artist’s studio called the “Factory”.

In its first location in the 1960s, the Factory acted as the centre of New York’s counterculture. After Warhol was shot by a Factory hanger-on in 1968, it moved to Union Square, becoming a more controlled environment.

Perrell will discuss this later period, before Warhol died in 1987. During this period, the artist shifted his focus primarily to portraiture.

Warhol’s portraits from the 1970s and 1980s, generously on loan to the gallery from the Green Family, were curated for this exhibition by Eve Godet Thomas. The exhibition includes images of rock stars and politicians, actresses and comedians as well as a stunning portrait of Mary-Jean Mitchell Green.

The suite of three multimedia prints, accompanied by Warhol’s preparatory Polaroid images, memorialises Bermudian Mary-Jean Green — wife of Peter Green and mother to Alexander and Andrew Green, the Hamilton Princess owners — who died prematurely in 1990 at age 38.

While Perrell first met Warhol in the New York art scene in the 1970s, his relationship with the island began when he first visited in 1999.

By this point in his career, he was a well-established arts professional. After actively exhibiting as a painter in downtown New York, Perrell began working with the Nassau County Museum of Art, which is housed in the former Frick family estate in Roslyn Harbor, Long Island.

There, he helped elevate the museum’s profile as a major suburban institution and became chief curator in 2009. After founding and operating an art education and curatorial organisation between 2013 and 2023 (Artful Circle LLC), Perrell returned to the museum to resume his role as chief curator.

In addition to being introduced to Warhol’s portraits and methods, tomorrow’s audience will hear about Perrell’s time in New York City, when he worked in Warhol’s ambit. That world — glamorous and steeped in celebrity — is epitomised in the BNG exhibition with the small but eloquent screen print of Marilyn Monroe.

In his talk at the BNG, Perrell will explore the back stories of the Marilyn Monroe and Mary-Jean Green portraits and others, including a suite of prints depicting Mick Jagger, based on a series of Polaroids taken when the Rolling Stones frontman visited Warhol’s estate in Montauk, Long Island. The suite of prints goes beyond celebrity portraiture, instead commemorating his relationship with Mick.

“Warhol was encyclopaedic,” Perrell argues. “That is what comes across in this show.”

All the themes that fascinated Warhol are on view, the famous and the infamous, the glamorous façade and tender humanity. Warhol understood the impact of image in a media-driven world. He understood how “celebrity and fame have replaced the gods and goddesses of ancient Rome”.

Andy Warhol Portraits From The Factory. Feb 10,2026 (Photograph by Akil Simmons)

Underpinning all the glamour and the glitz, however, Perrell recognises a strong democratic spirit. While he was fascinated by fame, Warhol produced easily recognisable imagery. And, although he produced one-of-a-kind portraits for the fabulously wealthy, he also sought to expand the dissemination of his work. That’s why, in 1967, he started Factory Additions, which released the Mick Jagger prints, using the multiplicity of the screen printing process to reach a larger audience.

Among other topics, Perrell will describe Warhol’s layered processes, which used screen prints, photographs, stencils of drawings, and the artist’s brush. Often, what Warhol produced was the “vestiges of the original image”. With the exhibit at the BNG, Perrell will have a full range of images to describe Warhol’s practice.

Andy Warhol Portraits From The Factory. Feb 10,2026 (Photograph by Akil Simmons)

Alongside such technical insight, Perrell will share his personal experience meeting Warhol while living in New York.

The first time Perrell met the artist, he was working for an artist coalition raising money for a New York mayoral candidate. Seeking donations, Perrell looked up Warhol’s name in the phone book and called him. Warhol invited him to the Factory and donated a print for sale, despite not supporting the candidate. When Perrell asked him why he was still willing to donate, Warhol simply said: “I give to everyone who asks.”

For Perrell, this incident suggested the complexity of the artist’s personality, at once shy and open, enamoured by glamour but charitable and giving.

Warhol famously deflected questions about himself by saying: “If you want to know about me, just look at my paintings.” Perrell believes this exhibition offers such an opportunity, a chance to see the many layers of the artist.

Franklin Perrell’s Meeting Warhol in Art and in Life takes place tomorrow from 5.30pm to 7.30pm at the Bermuda National Gallery. Tickets — $20 for BNG Members, $30 for non-members and free for teachers — must be purchased in advance at bng.bm/warhol-in-art-and-life