Los Angeles Museum and Getty Trust Jointly Acquire Collection of Mapplethorpe Works and Letters
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust said on Monday they had jointly acquired a huge collection of the prints, negatives and letters of Robert Mapplethorpe, further strengthening California’s position as a major center for 20th-century photography.
The acquisition is the first time the two institutions have collected works of art to share, in a partnership they formed to compete more effectively against other major museums being considered by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation as homes for the collection. The foundation is donating the majority of the more than 2,000 photographs — including Mapplethorpe silver-gelatin prints and Polaroid works — and the Getty and the county museum, with help from the David Geffen Foundation, are buying the rest.
The foundation estimated the value of the entire collection — which includes 120,000 negatives — at more than $30 million.
“This is pretty big news for us,” said Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, who was involved in 1992 with an earlier transfer of a major collection of Mapplethorpe work to the Guggenheim Museum, where he worked at the time....
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The acquisition is the first time the two institutions have collected works of art to share, in a partnership they formed to compete more effectively against other major museums being considered by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation as homes for the collection. The foundation is donating the majority of the more than 2,000 photographs — including Mapplethorpe silver-gelatin prints and Polaroid works — and the Getty and the county museum, with help from the David Geffen Foundation, are buying the rest.
The foundation estimated the value of the entire collection — which includes 120,000 negatives — at more than $30 million.
“This is pretty big news for us,” said Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, who was involved in 1992 with an earlier transfer of a major collection of Mapplethorpe work to the Guggenheim Museum, where he worked at the time....