Andy Warhol died on 22 February 1987 in New York, the morning after a gallbladder operation. He was 58. The cause given at the time was a cardiac arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat that stopped his heart.
He had checked into New York Hospital, on Manhattan's Upper East Side, on 20 February. The surgeon operated the next day. By the following morning he was dead.
Cool Stories About Art is a newsletter to learn art the fun way.
Join 200,000+ readers and get:
10 new art stories / month
The entire archive of content (1,000+ articles)
Comment, ask questions, and chat with other readers
Many accounts of his death call that operation routine. A routine gallbladder operation, the story goes, and then a heart that failed for no reason anyone could see. The word has stuck to the story ever since.
John Ryan, a retired surgeon who studies the history of medicine, told The New York Times in 2017 that it was nothing of the kind. He called it "major, major surgery" in "a very sick person," and said it was "not routine."
I think routine is the real error in the story. It makes the death an accident out of nowhere, when the man on the table had spent years avoiding exactly this room.
What You'll Discover
What he offered his surgeon.
What the surgeon found inside him.
Who was watching him that night.
What the hospital had to answer for.
Where his body was laid to rest.