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Letters and Ephemera: Anne MacDonald, Sam Wagstaff, Robert Mapplethorpe

The connection between Anne MacDonald (1942 – 2018) and Sam Wagstaff (1921 – 1987) dates back to the early 1970s when she was on the Board of Trustees at the Detroit Institute of Art where he was a curator. Despite her title, MacDonald was still in her 20s and…

Speech by Pierre Apraxine read at Sam Wagstaff’s memorial, with letter to Anne MacDonald, March 16, 1987.

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Letter Size: 8.75 x 12.5 inches

5-Page Speech Size: 8.5 x 11 inches

“I would like to thank you for the wonderful dinner you gave us the other Monday… I am sending you a copy of the text I read.”

From the text: “…with a whole generation of art lovers, I watched Sam singlehandedly in this country cast his magnetic net over the entire medium of photography, dragging to the surface for everybody to see, what was there all along, hidden because unwanted. It is the intensity of Sam’s involvement that gave to collecting photographs its intellectual underpinning and turned it into the exciting adventure it has become for the eye and the mind.”