Michael Rockefeller disappeared in New Guinea while collecting art like this. The son of a well-known family of art patrons, while studying anthropology at Harvard University he became transfixed by Asmat art and set out to explore its origins. In 1961, at the age of twenty-three, Michael was last seen swimming to shore from an overturned catamaran in the Arafura Sea. His father, Nelson Rockefeller (then governor of the state of New York), launched an exhaustive search but found not a trace. Today, a wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is filled with the Rockefeller collection of Asmat art. This is the top of a pole with human figures twisting through space. Among the Asmat, such poles are erected when a person dies to serve as a promise that the death will be avenged.
Wood and pigment
62 x 30 1/4 x 8 7/8 in. (157.48 x 76.84 x 22.54 cm)
Gift of Katherine White and the Boeing Company
81.17.1446
Not currently on view
Resources
Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The Untold Story, November 14, 2003 - November 14, 2004
Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.
