By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2026-09-02 22:36:28 | Updated at 2026-09-02 23:47:24
1 hour ago
Marc Cheshire’s picture currently hangs in the Whitney Museum of Art, thanks to Andy Warhol, J. Edgar Hoover and a cookie jar.
His is among 732 Polaroid pictures taken by Warhol entitled “Family Album,” which also includes Bianca Jagger, Yves Saint Laurent and Princess Caroline of Monaco.
Marc appears alongside his late mother Maxine Cheshire, a one-time columnist for the Washington Post, in the pictures. How it all happened is an unlikely encounter.
The episode — which Warhol majordomo Vincent Fremont characterized as “the Mao-cookie jar trade” — began in March 1973, when Marc, a self-described “precocious kid,” joined his mother at an estate sale for the recently deceased Hoover, the notorious director of the FBI.
Marc snagged the spook’s pig-shaped cookie jar. To him, this made perfect, if cheeky, sense: “It was close enough to the ‘60s, when FBI [agents] were known as pigs. Stamped on the bottom was USA. And I thought, what could be better for Hoover?”
Purchased for just $1.50, it was a cool memento. Then society publicist R. Couri Hay — another Warhol insider — stepped in and noted his pop artist pal’s penchant for cookie jars.
“I told Maxine, ‘Well, I can arrange to get you a cow [one of the cow wallpaper images Warhol was then making] in exchange for your wonderful, rare cookie jar,’” Hay told The Post.
He then recalled telling Warhol, “I think we should trade one of the prints for the cookie jar to add to your collection. Then Maxine will come up [to New York] and maybe she’ll write a story.”
That October, the Cheshires took the DC-to-LaGuardia shuttle and cabbed to Warhol’s infamous Factory, located on the then-dicey Union Square West. Marc, now 70 and working in the rare documents business, recalled to The Post how, by this time, they had carefully packed the now-valuable cookie jar into a box with newspaper cushioning.
Hay, who had tagged along, recalled their entrance to the Warhol wonderland, saying, “Maxine was clutching the cookie jar like it was a pot of gold. Andy took one look at Maxine and lit up. He thought she was a hoot. Meanwhile and all the factory regulars were running around. Maxine loved the whole thing.”
As remembered by Marc, there was “a lot of activity” when Warhol entered. “My memory is that he had a Polaroid camera and a tape recorder in one hand. His dog, Archie the dachshund, was in the other. I remember him being very approachable. We had a nice conversation and I told him how I ended up with the cookie jar.”
As for the Polaroids, Jennie Goldstein, who curated the Witney show, told The Post, “Warhol photographed everything, all the time. He got his first Polaroid camera in the mid ‘60s and was obsessed with the technology. He carried the camera everywhere with him and took photos of everyone who crossed his path.”
The cookie jar exchange was one of those things, now included in the exhibition. In addition to the cow wallpaper, Warhol threw in one of his famous Chairman Mao prints.
“They came from Andy’s gift closet where he kept prints [to give away as presents]. He wasn’t handing out hundred-dollar bills to people, but he was very generous with the prints,” said Hay.
“Maybe he was angling to sell Maxine a portrait,” he speculated, referring to how Warhol charged people $15,000 to have a sitting with him and the resulting art.
Warhol also signed Polaroids – as well as the prints – and gave them to the Cheshires. The Polaroids have been lost to the sands of time, while the screen prints hang in Marc’s Hudson Valley home. He plans on leaving them to his daughter.
Warhol produced thousands of screen prints and paintings in his career. Examples of his Mao prints sell for an estimated $27,000 to $47,000 according to myartbroker.com, while a signed wallpaper cow from 1971, like Marc’s is valued at $17,000 to $27,000 on the same site.
As for the pig-themed cookie jar, Marc couldn’t resist taking a shot at getting it back. In April 1988, he went to Sotheby’s for day-one of a 10-day-long auction of the recently deceased Warhol’s possessions. On the block: a brace of cookie jars that included the J. Edgar pig.
“I was prepared to pay $1,000,” recalled Marc. “But the cookie jars were the star of the show.”
Gaedalio Grinberg, board chairman of North American Watch Corp, scored multiple lots of Warhol’s cookie jars, including the pig, for a total of approximately $200,000.
Marc’s daughter was the one who urged him to check out the Whitney exhibition, although he was doubtful.
“We walked into the exhibition room and, literally, it was the first thing she saw. It was unbelievable,” he grinned.
The photo of Marc and his mom, shot by Warhol, was up on the museum wall, marked as “unidentified.” That is no longer the case.
He also felt it was a glorious journey for the cookie jar, from J. Edgar Hoover to himself for $1.50, then traded for art and inflated in value by association 15 years later.
