Warhol’s ‘time capsules’ contain everything from toenails to previously unseen paintings worth millions

‘I don’t know what I think,’ says Lenny Henry, echoing what many of us who were listening were probably also puzzling over. ‘Part of me thinks it’s art by the sheer fact that an artist has decided that something like this should happen for the amusement and intrigue of his fans…’

Henry was at the museum in Pittsburgh dedicated to the life and work of Andy Warhol. Among the collection, now displayed on seven floors of an old warehouse converted into a glittering catacomb of Sixties and Seventies style, are 610 boxes, dated and sealed by Warhol and designated by him as ‘time capsules’. These, though, are not the kind of tin box buried by Blue Peter fans in the grounds of the BBC TV Centre at White City, which were filled with carefully selected objects of the day, deemed to be useful and tastefully representative.

Warhol’s boxes contain anything from a tin of toenail clippings to unused condoms and previously unseen paintings now worth millions of pounds.