Michael Ward Stout

Michael Ward Stout died peacefully at his home in Carmel, New York, on Friday 16 October 2026, aged 83. No cause of death has been made public. Death notices appeared in The New York Times and the Lake Mills Leader on 27 October 2026, and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation announced his death with a memorial post featuring the portrait Mapplethorpe made of him in 1986.

The Foundation said he had left a lasting mark on the art world and on all who knew him. Dimitri Levas, Mapplethorpe's friend and assistant, wrote that Stout had championed the artist's legacy with intelligence, heart and humour, and the Keith Haring Foundation said it had been fortunate to benefit from his wisdom, guidance and humor for so many years.

He is survived by his sister-in-law Joanne Stout, nieces Stefanie Strasburg and Paula Moldenhauer, great-nephews, a great-niece, a great-great-nephew and other relatives. A memorial service was to be held at a later date.

Michael Ward Stout was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on 2 August 1943, the son of Ward and Hazel (Hug) Stout. He grew up in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, and graduated from Lake Mills High School in 1961. The school later gave him its Distinguished Alumni Award, in 2011.

He went on to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1965 and a law degree in 1968, before moving to New York City.

In New York Stout first practised corporate law, then moved into intellectual property and copyright. In 1974 he founded his own firm, Stout, Thomas & Johnson, focusing on image-based legal issues and the rights of visual artists. His clients included Salvador Dalí and Robert Mapplethorpe.

He had known Mapplethorpe socially in the 1970s and became his lawyer around 1980 or 1981, helping the photographer with commissions and licensing. In an essay for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art he recalled Mapplethorpe's interest in licensing designs for watches, jewellery, porcelain and furniture.

After Mapplethorpe's death in 1989 Stout led the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, which the artist had founded in 1988, and served as its president for 37 years. He initiated the 2011 arrangement under which the Getty Museum and LACMA jointly acquired 2,000 editioned prints and much of the archive went to the Getty Research Institute.

For more than 30 years he was also general counsel to the Keith Haring Foundation, and he served on committees and boards at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, the Chazen Museum of Art and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

Stout divided his time between New York City and a country house in Carmel, New York. He was a dedicated lover of classical music and an accomplished pianist and organist, playing a pipe organ installed in the barn of his country home. Friends and his family's notice spoke of his gift for friendship and his love for his friends and his animals.

He was predeceased by his long-time friend Stephen Shea and his brother Tom Stout.

Stout was one of the pioneers of art law in the United States, and colleagues described him as a mentor to a generation of lawyers working with artists and estates. His work keeping the Mapplethorpe archive and print collection together, and placing it with the Getty and LACMA, means the photographer's output can be studied as a whole in major public institutions. His long service to the Keith Haring Foundation and to museum committees in New York and Wisconsin made him a quiet but central figure in how American artists' estates are protected.