When Dr. Robert L. Drapkin chooses to do something, he does it fully. He is an in-depth collector of art.
He is also a medical oncology specialist with over 50 years of experience in the medical field, a prize winning body builder, and a healthy aging specialist currently acting as Medical Director at The Institute of Vitality after authoring the books Health Strong: What your Doctor Didn’t Tell You and Over 40 & Sexy as Hell. He and his wife of forty-four years, Chitranee, are residents of St. Petersburg.
The Drapkin Collection manages to be incredibly specific and yet surprisingly encompassing at the same time. The collection is mostly associated with photography. Collecting for over four decades, he and Chitranee have amassed images that tell the entire history of the medium, from small jewel-like daguerreotypes housed in leather-bound cases dating to the 1840s to large black and white contemporary abstract works, and everything in between. At one point the collection numbered not in the thousands, but in the tens of thousands. More about that later.
The collection now encompasses not just photography, but also ancient Mesoamerican art ranging from jade pieces to terracotta pottery, and Guatemalan folk art. And what does one do with so much art? Why open a gallery, of course. The Drapkins have a tucked-away gallery in the Grand Central District called From Mayan Hands, which sells gloriously compelling Guatemalan hand-crafted artwork. Dr. Drapkin goes to Central America and hand picks the interesting mix of contemporary native handcrafted items and antiques. Want to learn more? He wrote a book about it: Objects of the Mayan Spirit–Religious Folk Art. The gallery carries everything from simple jewelry to life-sized wooden sculptures. They are only open on Saturdays or by appointment, but it is worth taking an hour out of your weekend to see the offerings, and with several breweries within blocks it’s easy to combine a trip.
The Drapkins have also been incredibly generous with their art collection and have offered their extensive holdings to be shared in exhibitions throughout the Tampa Bay area including at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), the USF Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), and The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA). The MFA organized an exhibition to Brazil of Drapkin’s ancient pottery hosted by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba.
Through the Lens of Conflict: Vietnam Press Photographs from the Dr. Robert L. Drapkin Collection has been shown at FMoPA through. This exhibition consisted of eighty-one original Associated Press prints culled from his extensive collection. The photos are the actual ones printed by the newspapers back before there was such a thing as digital photography and they show physical signs of notations and cropping. Never meant to be exhibited or even seen in public, these prints capture the conflict and pathos of this difficult part of American history. Naturally, Drapkin wrote a book about it: Understanding the American War in Vietnam. The collection, exhibition, and book are a good example of how fully Drapkin explores his areas of interest.
Lest you think the Drapkins are all about collecting, it is essential to point out that they are also equally and perhaps even more importantly generous donors of art. The Drapkins have given thousands photographs to the MFA over the years, and in 2015 they partnered with Ludmila and Bruce Dandrews to gift the MFA approximately 15,000 more photographic objects forming The Dandrew-Drapkin Collection, helping the MFA to become one of the most respected holdings of photography in the Southeast United States. The photographs span more than 100 years of image history and include both famous works of art and vernacular works by unknowns. In addition to these, the Drapkins have also given the MFA ancient Mesoamerican Art and Japanese prints. A gallery was recently dedicated in their name to acknowledge the scope of these gifts.
Dr. Drapkin began acquiring 19th-century photographs in the early 1970s while studying to be a doctor in New York City. At the time few people collected objects of this kind and therefore few dealers bothered. As per the law of supply and demand, photos were still remarkably affordable. Once exposed to the possibilities, he started acquiring what would become one of the most respected photography collections in the country. His criteria: historical importance and visual impact.
In his self-published book, More Than Meets the Eye: The American Tintype, Dr. Drapkin states, “I believe that there is an important dynamic between history and photographs. Each tells us more about the other, and this process is alive and never ending.” It’s the history that hooked him in the beginning and he continues to appreciate the chance to stay creative and learn about new things.
Dr. Drapkin claims to have slowed down with his purchasing, but is still working on projects that interest him. Drapkin’s slowing down is more like what most of us actually aspire to. His recent activities includes reviewing and researching items from his forty years worth of collecting including photographs from the Civil War, Native American images, 19th-century African American works, Alaska photos from the gold rush, and early hand-colored photography. And he is still the Director at the Institute of Vitality. If his continued output and late-life accolades are any indication of living vitally into old age, it certainly seems he embodies what he teaches. There is, no doubt, more to come. •
