Who shot Andy Warhol at The Factory in 1968?

Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol at The Factory in 1968.

On June 3, 1968, Solanas arrived at Warhol’s studio at 33 Union Square West in New York and fired three times. Warhol was seriously wounded in the chest, abdomen, spleen, stomach, liver, and esophagus, but survived after emergency surgery. Art critic Mario Amaya was also shot and injured, while curator Fred Hughes escaped harm.

Solanas was the author of the SCUM Manifesto and had previously asked Warhol to produce her play Up Your Ass. Warhol had misplaced the manuscript, which contributed to tension between them. She surrendered to police later that day.

The attack had a lasting effect on Warhol’s health and public image. A common mix-up is to identify Solanas as a Factory performer; she was instead a writer and radical feminist who had interacted with Warhol through the studio scene.