Housepost fragment

Label TextA pole made famous by Rockefeller 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.

Object number81.17.1446

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The Untold Story, November 14, 2003 - November 14, 2004

Credit LineGift of Katherine White and the Boeing Company

Dimensions62 x 30 1/4 x 8 7/8 in. (157.48 x 76.84 x 22.54 cm)

MediumWood and pigment