The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Andy Warhol’s ‘Prince’ Prints May Have Increased Their Value by 40 Times

Tori Latham
·2 min read

For decades, Andy Warhol’s silkscreen portraits of Prince were a blip in his larger oeuvre. But the Supreme Court may have single-handedly increased their value by 40 times, as collectors are now clamoring to get their hands on the artworks.

In May, the United States’ highest court said that one of the “Prince” silkscreens violated a photographer’s copyright, and since then, art-world insiders have been trying to track down the 16 “Prince” pieces, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. About two decades ago, the works would have sold for about $25,000 each. Now, they could fetch up to $1 million, industry insiders told the newspaper.

“The art world spins on stories, and now everyone wants the ‘Prince,’” Alberto Mugrabi, a collector whose family owns hundreds of Warhols, told WSJ. After the Supreme Court ruling, Mugrabi combed through his holdings, thinking he might have a “Prince” on hand. Alas, it was just a Michael Jackson.

Because Warhol’s “Prince” series was once a relatively undesirable part of his repertoire, the silkscreens have mostly existed in obscurity, making them hard to track down now. Mugrabi and others in the art world think that many of the pieces are in private collections in Europe and Asia. The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has four of the 16 in storage; the institution is now planning to display the portraits for the first time since Prince died in 2016 (one of them hasn’t been seen publicly since 2009).

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Auctioneers, understandably, are also itching to come into possession of a “Prince.” The $1 million price tag that Mugrabi estimated is far more than the $173,000 paid eight years ago for one of the works sold by Sotheby’s London, the most expensive example from the series. And when another “Prince” hit the auction block in 2017, it didn’t even reach its asking price of $295,000.

The Supreme Court decision, however, has changed the calculus. “Paintings can become celebrities,” Richard Polsky, a private dealer and Warhol authenticator, told The Wall Street Journal. “Warhol’s ‘Prince’ became the subject of a Supreme Court ruling, so now it’s a bigger part of pop culture.”

Warhol would surely be pleased that his silkscreen prints are having their 15 minutes of fame.