Reader feedback: Warhol is Rusyn

Re: Modern Art Museum of Andy Warhol seeks new home, Flash news briefs, Jan 12 - 18, Vol 10, No 1

"[Andy Warhol], famous US artist of Slovak origin..."

This statement is problematic for several reasons, the primary one being that it is true only in the sense that his parents emigrated from a village that is today in the Slovak Republic. Otherwise, it is (or was, I thought) well known that Warhol's ancestry is Rusyn. Mikova is clearly not a Slovak-inhabited village.

I realize the term "Slovak" here may be shorthand for saying that "Andy Warhol was a famous US artist whose ancestors lived in what is now the Slovak Republic" but if he and his parents had been ethnic Hungarians rather than Rusyns, I highly doubt that the term "Slovak" would be so easily and readily attached to him. Please, give the Rusyns some credit.

Richard Custer,
Washington, DC, USA

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