Meet Joan Agajanian Quinn, the one-time West Coast editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine.
Probably one of the hippest, most interesting women a person could meet, she knows art, especially art from the West Coast’s “Cool School.”
Her home is filled with important works from this period and it was the artists themselves who decided where and how their artwork should be placed in Quinn’s home.
“When we (Quinn and her late husband, Jack) bought the piece the artist brought it, found a place in the house and left it, installed himself or herself and we left it in those places,” Quinn said. “When they go on view in the museums, they come out of my house and that space remains empty until it comes back.”
It was a strategy born of diplomacy.
“We were very friendly with all the artists,” she added. “What happened was they always felt like they had the priority in our collection. Each one felt like, ‘Oh, mine is the best.’”
In the late 1950s and into the 1960s west coast art was undergoing a significant shift. Post-war artists such as Warhol, Jean Michel Basquiat and Lita Albuquerque were using new materials and new techniques to express themselves in ways not seen before in the art world. It was called the Cool School because these works came to represent the hip, understated vibe of Los Angeles. Quinn and her husband, Jack, were right in the middle of it.
Get a glimpse into Quinn’s life and her collection at the new exhibit, “On the Edge: Los Angeles Art from the Joan and Jack Quinn Family Collection,” which spans several decades. It is currently hanging at the Tucson Museum of Art. Look for work by Carlos Almaraz, Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell and Lynda Benglis. The exhibit is open until May 20, 2026.
“The Quinn Family Collection reflects a time and place where artists on the West Coast were redefining what art could be,” said Anne Breckenridge Barrett, Jon and Linda Ender director and CEO of the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block. “This exhibition celebrates how these artists forged a distinctive aesthetic in contrast to the New York scene. Their embrace of light, material, and surface, infused with experimentation, created a counternarrative. The exhibition embodies TMA’s mission of connecting art to life by amplifying the individual and collective creativity that built a thriving art scene in Los Angeles.”
The name, “On the Edge,” came from the original curator of the exhibit. She thought she would borrow only enough work from the Quinns’ collection for one room.
“(The exhibit) started in Bakersfield and the curator at the museum started with a very small one room and then as she got to know the collection better she extended it to another room and then another room. Pretty soon it took over the whole museum in Bakersfield,” Quinn said. “She named it, ‘On the Edge,’ because in California we’re on the edge of the United States and work was being made when it was very edgy because they were using materials that no one in the art world had used before.”
For example, the artists used found objects such as bullet casing and playing cards, sticks and cement.
“The artists were all working in different media that nobody in New York or people who thought they were serious artists were working in so it was edgy at that time,” she said.
Now in her 90s, Quinn talks casually about these artists who became famous and the almost mundane things they did together. She talks about them as if they were family, which in a way they were.
“(Andy Warhol) was sitting there and he was saying, ‘Where’s a good place to shop for jewelry?’ and I said, ‘Beverly Hills; I’ll take you there tomorrow,’” she said. “That was his thing. We collected jewelry together. We were in terrible, terrible competition.”
Then there was the time she and a friend were in Europe with Basquiat, well known for his substance use.
“Jean Michel and I were in Italy together,” Quinn said. “My friend had rented a villa near Florence and we would take day trips and then Jean Michel would come with us.”
One day on an outing Basquiat directed them to a rather unusual place.
“We went into Florence to a churchyard one night and we parked outside,” she added. “Jean Michel said, ‘This is good, this is fine,’ It was dark; there were no lights anywhere and (my friend) asked, ‘What are we doing here?’ He said, ‘Oh, I’ll be back in a minute.’ He went in the back (of the churchyard) and I think he made a drug buy.”
It broke Quinn’s heart when he died at the age of 27.
“We never judged him, we never said anything because that was part of his life,” she said.
Quinn was never a professional model but she does hold the world record for having more portraits done of her than anyone else. More than 300, in fact. The first was done by Andy Warhol, who was doing portraits at the time, she said. A few are part of the exhibit including one interpretation using a long piece of neon tubing by Laddie John Dill.
When she looks back over her life, Quinn is thankful and happy.
“I’ve had a really rich, wonderful, thank-God-for-the-path-he’s-given-me life,” she said. “I thank God for it because I think that’s where it all came from.”
On the Edge: Los Angeles Art from the Joan and Jack Quinn Family Collection
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday
WHERE: The Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Avenue
COST: $15/general admission, $12/seniors and educators, $10/college students and free/those younger than 17, veterans, military, American Alliance of Museums members and TMA members
INFO: tucsonmuseumofart.org