THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 5, 1996 TAG: 9607040060
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 37 lines
FAMED POP artist Andy Warhol wasn't the only one shot by Valerie Solanas on June 3, 1968. Watch closely during the ``assassination'' scene in the film ``I Shot Andy Warhol'' and you'll see a former director of The Chrysler Museum of Art get it in the hip.
Actually, what you'll see is actor Massimo Audiello portraying Mario Amaya as he threw himself onto the floor of Warhol's office, thinking that snipers may have been shooting into the windows.
Then Amaya, who directed the Norfolk museum from 1976 to 1978, became Solanas' second target. The man-hating street urchin stood over Amaya's body and took potshots at him.
``One bullet entered (Amaya's) left side above the hip and emerged from his back, missing his spine by only a quarter of an inch,'' wrote David Bourdon in his 1989 book on Warhol.
An elegant, well-dressed man, Amaya was then the 34-year-old founding editor of the London magazine Arts and Artists, and was at Warhol's office to discuss a possible show in England, Bourdon wrote.
And now he found himself wounded and making a mad dash for an adjacent room, slamming the doors behind him.
After Solanas left, Amaya excitedly asked those on hand to count the holes in his back, as he lifted his bloodied shirt. Amaya and Warhol were rushed to a nearby hospital.
While Warhol had a two-month hospital stay, Amaya was amazingly unharmed. ``He got bandaged up, went home, changed into a clean shirt, and set off for his previously scheduled dinner party that evening,'' Bourdon wrote.
Amaya, in fact, survived another 18 years - until June 1986, when he died of AIDS-related ailments.
The shooting apparently did not make Amaya a more cautious man. While in Norfolk, the jet-setting director hosted art photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's first museum exhibit, in 1978. And there were no complaints. by CNB