Samuel Wagstaff was born on November 4,1921, in New York City.
10 Facts About Sam Wagstaff
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Sam Wagstaff's parents divorced in 1932, and Wagstaff's mother, a daughter of German inventor and scientist Col.
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Sam Wagstaff later worked in the field of advertising in the 1950s, which he hated.
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Sam Wagstaff returned to school to study Renaissance art at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts and turned his energies to the art world.
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Sam Wagstaff served as curator of contemporary art at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut from 1961 to 1968.
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In 1968, when he was not chosen for the position of museum director, Sam Wagstaff left Hartford for the Detroit Institute of Arts staying to 1971.
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Sam Wagstaff began selling his collection of paintings, using the proceeds to buy 19th-century American, British, and French photography.
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Sam Wagstaff's collection was recognized as one of the finest private holdings in the United States.
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Between 1976 and 1986, Sam Wagstaff donated his personal papers to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
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Sam Wagstaff died of pneumonia arising from AIDS at his home in Manhattan on January 14,1987, two years before Mapplethorpe.