From the Introduction
As a curator, collector, and patron, Sam Wagstaff played a more influential role in shaping art history during the second half of the twentieth century than is widely understood, but his influence is often obscured in the glare of his notoriety as the lover, mentor, and patron of Robert Mapplethorpe. In fact, Mapplethorpe was only the last and most conspicuous of Wagstaff’s distinctions.
As a curator of contemporary art in the 1960s, Wagstaff set a standard at two leading American museums, the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Detroit Institute of Arts. In Hartford, he mounted several landmark exhibitions, among them “Black, White, and Gray,” the first museum show of minimal art, in 1964, and, two years later, the first museum show of artist Tony Smith. In Detroit, he brought the New York avant-garde to a conservative institution, creating not a little mischief in the process.
Wagstaff provided support and friendship to a roster of sometimes young, often unknown, artists throughout the 1960s whose names today constitute a pantheon of the era: Andy Warhol, Ray Johnson, Tony Smith, Agnes Martin, Richard Tuttle, Michael Heizer, Mark di Suvero, Walter De Maria, and Neil Jenney, among countless others. Mapplethorpe was the last in that long line—the only one with whom Wagstaff had a romantic relationship.
REVIEWS and ARTICLES
“Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe,’ by Philip Gefter”
—book review by Deborah Solomon, The New York Times, December 5, 2014.
“Falling for Photography”
—book review by Martin Filler, The New York Review of Books, December 15, 2014.
“Briefly Noted”
—The New Yorker, November 24, 2014, liked here.
“Before There was Mapplethorpe”
—book review by Allen Ellenzweig, The Gay and Lesbian Review, May-June 2015.
“Warhol, Mapplethorpe, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and the greatest New York story ever”
—excerpt, Salon.com, November 15, 2014.
“Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe by Philip Gefter”
—book review by Marcus Field, The Independent, January 29, 2015.
“Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe by Philip Gefter
— review: ‘excellent and overdue’,” by Lucy Davies, The Telegraph, March 3, 2015.
“Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe”
—starred book review, Publisher’s Weekly.
“Mapplethorpe’s Other Man”
—review by Larissa Archer, Hyperallergic, February 24, 2015.
“On Philip Gefter’s Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe”
—review by Kira Josefsson, Aperture, June 11, 2015.
“A Lovers’ Discourse”
—essay by Philip Gefter, Aperture, Spring 2015.
“Delayed Exposure”
—by Fan Zhong, W magazine, November 3, 2014.