Pierre Apraxine (December 10, 1934 – February 26, 2023) was an American art historian.[1][2]
Biography
editBorn in 1934 in Tallinn, Estonia, into a noble family tracing its roots back to 15th-century Russia, his family relocated to Brussels before World War II.[3][4] During a return to Estonia in 1941 to safeguard family property, his father was arrested by the Red Army and executed in Leningrad.[3]
Apraxine studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Higher Institute for the History of Art and Archaeology.[3] In 1969, he received a Fulbright scholarship and moved to New York, where he worked at the Museum of Modern Art until a union walkout in 1973.[3]
Apraxine developed an interest in 20th-century photography while employed at the Marlborough Gallery, learning under painter and photographer Paul Katz.[3] Apraxine was part of a group of photography enthusiasts known as the "Eye Club," which included curator Françoise Heilbrun, art dealers André Jammes and Gérard Lévy, and collector Sam Wagstaff.[3]
Apraxine co-curated several exhibitions, including The Waking Dream (1993), La Divine Comtesse: Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione (2000), and The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (2005) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[3]
References
edit- ^ Goodman, Wendy (October 9, 2020). "What Stays With You Everything in collector and curator Pierre Apraxine's West Village apartment has a life of its own". Curbed. Archived from the original on October 16, 2020. Retrieved November 8, 2024.
- ^ Naudet, Jean-Jacques (March 6, 2023). "In Memoriam : Pierre Apraxine (1934-2023)". The Eye of Photography. Archived from the original on March 6, 2023. Retrieved November 8, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g Kennedy, Randy (March 3, 2023). "Pierre Apraxine, 88, Assembler of a Remarkable Trove of Photos, Dies". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 4, 2023. Retrieved November 8, 2024.
- ^ Poderos, Jean (March 1, 2023). "Mort de Pierre Apraxine, l'œil absolu de la photographie" (in French). Connaissance des Arts. Archived from the original on March 1, 2023. Retrieved November 8, 2024.