CASH FOR YOUR WARHOL

Inman Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a quiet neighborhood that feels distant from the city’s universities, a good place to linger in a café or browse through bookstores and antique shops. Last week, though, the square got a loud newcomer: an art project masquerading as a small business, decked out in safety yellow and advertising “Cash For Your Warhol.”

The store, nestled between a tony wine bar and a vegetarian fast-food stop, is insistently garish, festooned with signs that repeatedly shout its name and purpose. A thin banner across the top elaborates some common wares: “MAO / MARILYN / SOUP CANS / ELECTRIC CHAIR / ELVIS.” Inside, the joke continues, in the form of smaller jokes: oversized checks on the walls from successful purchases, and a board detailing the most sought-after works.

The back wall is covered by a vinyl sign so enormous that its edges have to be folded over, the slogan truncated into “AS FOR YOUR ARHO.” Overseeing it all is Geoff Hargadon–the energetic Somerville resident who, depending on your preferred narrative, serves either as company founder or artistic mastermind.

Hargadon, a financial planner by day, has been pretending to buy Warhols since 2009, when the recession spawned an influx of bandit signs promising ”Cash For Your Home” and “Cash For Your Gold.” Fascinated by the sheer bluntness of the signs, Hargadon started collecting them. At some point, while thinking about markets left untapped, “the phrase [Cash For Your Warhol] just popped into my head,” he says. He set up a hotline (617-553-1103), designed his own line of signs, stickers and billboards, and stuck them all over major cities from Kentucky to Pennsylvania.

The storefront, which opened in January 2016, is the latest incarnation of the project, which has also taken the form of several gallery shows and an installation outside Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum, which at one point considered selling a portion of its collection. Now that it’s a brick-and-mortar operation, Cash For Your Warhol is even more public-facing. Hargadon threw a "totally packed" opening bash, and hosts visitors during irregular hours, which he announces on Twitter.

To read the complete article, see:
AN AFTERNOON AT BOSTON'S NEWEST PARODY STOREFRONT, 'CASH FOR YOUR WARHOL' (www.atlasobscura.com/articles/an-afternoon-at-bostons-newest-parody-storefront-cash-for-your-warhol)

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