Andy Warhol’s couch

You can’t visit The Andy Warhol Museum without getting a photo of yourself sitting on the couch—it’s encouraged and nearly mandatory, but I wanted to simply due to the connection of the couch to the Beats—specifically its use in Warhol’s 1966 film Couch that included Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky crowded onto it like the cramped couch sequences in Kerouac’s 1959 film, Pull My Daisy.

So, I sat there, far right, where Corso sat in the photo below (Kerouac at another end).

Not so fast! Imagine my disappointment to discover that the couch is not the couch.

It turns out the couch was stolen in 1968. It was left unattended on the sidewalk while Warhol was in the process of moving his NYC studio.

The couch disappeared from the sidewalk, which ironically is how it came into Warhol’s hands in the first place. It seems in 1964 it was found abandoned on a sidewalk as discarded trash in front of the YMCA on East 47th street.

A Warhol collaborator rolled it into Warhol’s studio where it became a central gathering place for guests and a backdrop for many iconic photographs.

The couch in the Warhol museum is a faithful reproduction and, like the original, also a backdrop for many (not so iconic) photographs.

Quoting Roger Daltry, “We won’t get fooled again!”