"If you like the arts, you have a real banquet here in Pittsburgh to choose from," says Thomas Sokolowski, 54-year old Director of The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. Wearing poppy-pink glasses as bright as the posy in Andy Warhol's 1964 Flowers, Sokolowski's zest for his work is as infectious as his delighted smile. It especially lights up his face when he's talking about The Warhol's 10th anniversary exhibition Flowers Observed, Flowers Transformed, which presently runs through September 5. The Museum's sixth, seventh and fourth floor galleries are literally saturated with flowers, and there is a bouquet for every kind of taste. They showcase more than 30 years of a recurring theme and influence in Warhol's work from the 1950's through the early 1980's. There are flowers done in the stark modern genre, and there are also the impressionist-images of Claude Monet, comforting in their familiarity. Stately mosaics and pressed, dried flower wreaths -in both the bridal and the Southern traditional, also line the walls. "The purpose of the show is to show how multi-faceted Warhol really was, that he wasn't just this 'renegade artist' who only made pictures of soup cans," Sokolowski explains, chuckling. "The fact is, Andy loved flowers." Sokolowski says that when it came to the floral motif, Warhol was initially pretty traditional, observing and painting flowers like the 17th century still life painters did. But then the '60's came around, and he started getting groovier, portraying daisies and hibiscus flowers as abstract or Technicolor. Like Warhol, Sokolowski was also trained in the traditional arts, living in Europe while he worked on his dissertation in art history. Still in his twenties then, he came back to the U.S. to accept his first "real" job teaching art at the Chrysler Museum as curator of European painting and sculpture, and then as chief curator in 1983-84. After spending three and a half years there, he moved on to begin what would be a twelve-year stint as Director of New York University's Grey Art Gallery & Study Center. "It was really here that the connective tissue (to Warhol) began to form: one of the biggest and most popular shows we put on was about the early career of Andy Warhol. Not that it was my only credential, but I think it sealed my fate!" Now in his ninth year as Director of The Warhol, Sokolowski readily accepted the position in Pittsburgh. "I wanted to do something larger, something apart from the proverbial," says Sokolowski. "And I wanted to see if I could live outside of New York City, which I consider home." When asked if Pittsburgh could possibly measure up to the sophisticated art world that is envelopes a city like New York, Sokolowski emphatically nods his head. "Absolutely, there is a wealth of art right around us. I only wish we could get the people who aren't interested in the arts to understand that what they have here is so interesting," says Sokolowski. "Unfortunately, we are seldom even tourists of our own city, or our own country, for that matter. Another advantage is that prices are so much cheaper here than anywhere else!" Sokolowski believes that when it comes to the arts -including the ballet, theater and the opera-Pittsburgh has what he deems an "embarrassment of riches." "Largely that is due to the enormous amounts of money that people's ancestors here made at the turn of the century, like the Andrew Carnegies, the Fricks, etc.," says Sokolowski. "Pittsburgh has very rich foundations, and those foundations have allowed for flourishes in the art…why not be proud of that?" Along with The Warhol, Pittsburgh can add the Heinz Endowment, Carnegie Museum of Art, the Frick Museum, the Mattress Factory and a host of other cultural institutions to its credit. "All of this would normally only be possible for a city of much larger size, if not for these foundations, and I say this with great thankfulness and generosity," says Sokolowski, arms outstretched as if in a welcoming embrace. "People in Pittsburgh are very lucky…after all, it is the place where Warhol was born." Utilizing Andy Warhol's flower-themed artwork as a foundation, Flowers Observed, Flowers Transformed is an all-encompassing historical, sociological and psychological investigation of flowers and their relationship to art. In the Flowers Observed section, there are earthy botanical prints and drawings from the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University, classical portraits of Edouard Manet and Ernst Stuven, porcelain tea cups and fine silver from the Tiffany Archive, Japanese brocade and pottery and beautiful sienna-tinted photographs of floral arrangements from Adolphe Braun. "It is here that we demonstrate the notion of how many types of artists, photographers and scientists -who often are portrayed at odds with one other-all see the glory of flowers, however unique their perspective," Sokolowski explains. For Flowers Transformed, the exhibit explores the ever-changing, impermanent nature of flowers, most starkly illustrated by a wall filled with scenes of flowers in various stages of decay. Here there are huge black leather flowers, a hard, cold bench that ironically emanates the scent of sun-kissed blooms, a painstakingly-designed floral curtain by contemporary artist Jim Hodges and another acclaimed video in which Kutlug Ataman obsesses over a woman's absolute passion with her large Amaryllis collection. The exhibition is funded in part by The Roy A. Hunt Foundation. The Andy Warhol Museum is funded by support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the National Endowment of the Arts. The Andy Warhol Museum is located at 117 Sandusky Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15212-5890, on the North Shore. Hours of operation are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Closed Monday. Admission for members is free. Adults-$10, Seniors-$7, Children/Students-$6. Visitors are also welcome to shop in The Warhol Store and eat in The Warhol Café. You can contact The Warhol at 412-237-8300, information@warhol.org or log on to www.warhol.org for more information.