Sam Wagstaff

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 New York 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. 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.