An Exhibition of Photographs From The Collection of Sam Wagstaff, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, c. 1978. This is a scarce poster featuring the floral still lives of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Samuel Jones Wagstaff, Jr. (November 4, 1921 – January 14, 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. From 1973 to early 1984 Wagstaff assembled one of the most important private collections of photographs in the world. His interests spanned from the experimental beginnings of photography in the mid-nineteenth century to the works of contemporary artists. Wagstaff promoted photography as art by exhibiting, publishing, and lecturing on his holdings. A high point came when he organized the exhibition Photographs from the Collection of Sam Wagstaff, which opened in 1978 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, before touring to seventeen venues. Wagstaff was at the forefront of establishing a market for photographs, and his reputation as an arbiter of taste provided an impetus for museums to collect and for scholars to study this long-neglected medium. In 1984 Wagstaff sold his collection to the J. Paul Getty Museum, where it became part of a group of major acquisitions that formed the Department of Photographs.

This photo has been professionally framed in untreated 1/2” maple with museum glass. Box joint finished. It has some minor creasing.

S — 36” x 24” plus framing

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