Sam Wagstaff

For other uses, see Samuel S. Wagstaff, Jr.
Sam Wagstaff
Born Samuel Jones Wagstaff, Jr.
(1921-11-04)November 4, 1921
New York, U.S.
Died January 14, 1987(1987-01-14) (aged 65)
New York, U.S.
Nationality American
Education Hotchkiss School
Alma mater Yale University
Institute of Fine Arts
Known for Curator, collector

Samuel Jones Wagstaff, Jr. (4 November 1921 – 14 January 1987) was an American art curator and collector as well as the artistic mentor and benefactor of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (who was also his lifetime companion) and poet-punk rocker Patti Smith. Wagstaff is known in part for his support of Minimalism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Earthworks, but his aesthetic acceptance and support of photography presaged the acceptance of the medium as a fine art.

Biography

Born on November 4, 1921, in New York City, Wagstaff was the son of Samuel Jones Wagstaff, Sr., a wealthy lawyer from an old Social Register family, and his second wife, Polish émigré Olga May Piorkowska, a fashion illustrator who had worked for Harper's Bazaar and was previously married to Arthur Paul Thomas.[1][2] He had one sibling, a sister, Judith (Mrs Thomas Lewis Jefferson). His parents divorced in 1932, and Wagstaff's mother, a daughter of Polish inventor and scientist Col. Arthur Emil Piorkowski, married Donald V. Newhall, an artist.

After growing up on Central Park South, attending the Hotchkiss School and graduating from Yale University, and being a fixture on the debutante circuit, Wagstaff joined the US Navy in 1941 as an ensign, where he took part in the D-day landing at Omaha Beach in World War II. He later worked in the field of advertising in the 1950s, which he hated. He returned to school to study Renaissance art at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, however, and turned his energies to the art world.[3][4][5]

Career

In 1959, a David E. Finley art history fellowship took him to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He served as curator of contemporary art at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut from 1961 to 1968. In January, 1964, he organized the show “Black, White, and Gray," choosing exhibits presenting what he described as "the sparse aesthetic shared by a number of artists whose work was pared down to a minimum". It is now often referred to as the first survey of Minimalist Art.[6] In 1968, when he was not chosen for the position of museum director, Wagstaff left Hartford[7] for the Detroit Institute of Arts staying to 1971.[8] In addition to his curatorial work, Wagstaff was a noted collector, just like his father, who collected ephemera.[9] After a conflict with the Detroit Institute of Arts' board of trustees over an earthwork by Michael Heizer, which had destroyed the immaculate museum lawn, he moved back to New York.[4]

After seeing the exhibition "The Painterly Photograph, 1890-1914" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1973 and meeting Robert Mapplethorpe in 1972, Wagstaff became convinced that photographs were the most unrecognized and, possibly, the most valuable works of art. He began selling his collection of paintings, using the proceeds to buy 19th-century American, British, and French photography. Then, influenced by Mapplethorpe, Wagstaff's taste veered toward the daring, and he began to depart from established names in search of new talent. His collection was soon recognized as one of the finest private holdings in the United States. In 1984 Wagstaff's photography collection went to the J. Paul Getty Museum, for a reported price said to be in the neighborhood of $5 million.[1][5]

Saying he needed the challenge of building another collection, Sam Wagstaff turned to 19th-century American silver. A show of more than 100 examples from his silver collection opened on March 20, 1987 at the New–York Historical Society.[1]

Between 1976 and 1986, Sam Wagstaff donated his personal papers to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. In 2008, the bulk of these papers were digitized and made available online (see the Samuel J. Wagstaff Papers, 1932–1985).

Personal life

Mapplethorpe's Studio in Manhattan

Sam Wagstaff met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in 1972 at a party, beginning a fifteen-year relationship that would last until Wagstaff's death, described as "first a kind of marriage, sexual and artistic, then a friendship".[10] Mapplethorpe, whom Wagstaff called his shy pornographer, was also his guide to the gay demimonde of extreme sex and drugs that flourished in New York in the 1970s and 1980s.[3] In the 1980s, Wagstaff gave Mapplethorpe $500,000 to purchase the top-floor loft at 24 Bond Street, where the photographer lived and had his shooting space.

Death

Wagstaff died of pneumonia arising from AIDS at his home in Manhattan on January 14, 1987, two years before Mapplethorpe.[1][11]

Posthumously

A fund in Sam Wagstaff's name for the purchase of photographs was started in 1987 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by art dealer Daniel Wolf.[1]

In 2007, James Crump directed the documentary film Black White + Gray, which premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. In his New York Times review of the film, critic Stephen Holden wrote "Because Mapplethorpe’s story is already familiar, the movie devotes most of its time to Wagstaff, whose personal history is a classic case of repressed or closeted homosexuality belatedly and furiously unleashed."[3]

In 2014, Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe, a biography of Sam Wagstaff, by Philip Gefter, was published by Norton/Liveright, and won the 2014 Marfield Prize for Arts Writing.[12]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Sam Wagstaff, 65, A Curator And Photography Collector". The New York Times. Grace Glueck. January 16, 1987. Retrieved 2011-08-31.
  2. ↑ http://www.derbycityprints.com/1287-Olga%20Piorkowski%20Thomas%20Wagstaff%20Newhall-artist.htm
  3. 1 2 3 "A Collector and His Polaroid Passions". The New York Times. Stephen Holden. October 19, 2007. Retrieved 2011-09-01.
  4. 1 2 Detroit Metro Times: "Wagstaff wins", May 14, 2008
  5. 1 2 Gaines, Catherine S., A Finding Aid to the Samuel J. Wagstaff Papers, circa 1932–1985, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
  6. ↑ quote and assessment found in: Meyer, James. "Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties" Yale University Press, 2001. p. 77
  7. ↑ Gefter, Philip "Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe, a biography of Sam Wagstaff" Norton/Liveright, 2014.
  8. ↑ Gaines, Catherine S., A Finding Aid to the Samuel J. Wagstaff Papers, circa 1932–1985, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
  9. ↑ Hilton Als, Downtown Chronicles, “WAGSTAFF'S EYE,” The New Yorker, January 13, 1997, p. 36
  10. ↑ ALS, Hilton Downtown Chronicles: Wagstaff's Eye The New Yorker, January 13, 1997
  11. ↑ Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe, a 2007 documentary film by James Crump (Movie Review By Stephen Holden, October 19, 2007, NY Times)
  12. ↑ Ernest Hardy, Doc of the Week | Black White + Gray, Crave, August 25, 2015

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.