The Los Angeles County Museum of Arts (LACMA) and the J. Paul Getty Trust have acquired a large collection of Robert Mapplethorpe prints, negatives and letters, The New York Times reports. The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation is donating more than 2,000 photographs, and the Getty and LACMA are buying the rest with help from The David Geffen Foundation. The entire collection’s estimated value is more than $30 million. The Getty and LACMA are also planning to collaborate on exhibitions and publications using both the photographs and archives. Mapplethorpe, known for his elegant black-and-white photos of flowers as well as his explicit homoerotic imagery—the latter causing a landmark censorship trial in 1990—died of AIDS-related illness in 1989.

To read the Times article, click here.


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