The Robert Mapplethorpe Gallery
In 1992 the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation named the Guggenheim Foundation the recipient of approximately 200 of Mapplethorpe’s finest photographs and unique objects. Realized in several stages between 1993 and 1998, the gift made the Guggenheim the most comprehensive public repository of this important American artist’s work. The selection spans every period and area of Mapplethorpe’s work, from his early Polaroids, collages, and mixed-media constructions to his iconic, classicizing photographs of male and female nudes, flowers, and statuary; his portraits of artists, celebrities, and acquaintances; and his more explicit depictions of the S&M underground. Over 20 of the artist’s best-known self-portraits are represented, from a series of 1972 Polaroids to his haunting Self-Portrait (1988), taken a year before his tragically premature death from AIDS in 1989.
The gift—which included a major grant—inaugurated the Guggenheim’s
photography collection and exhibition program. Coming in the early
1990s, at a time when photography had already begun to assume the
central role it occupies today in contemporary art practice, this new
direction in the collection allowed the Guggenheim to maintain a
leading role in defining and preserving the most important art of the
present.
Browse works from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Gift in the Collection Online.
Visit The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Web site
Related Exhibition
Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition
Suggested Reading
Danto, Arthur Coleman (ed.). Mapplethorpe. New York: Random House, 1992
Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition: Photographs and Mannerist Prints. Exhibition catalogue. Berlin and New York: Deutsche Guggenheim, 2004
Wolf, Sylvia, Polaroids: Mapplethorpe. (Exhibition catalogue) Munich, New York: Prestel, 2007