Museum of Primitive Art - Selected Works from the Collection - Spring 1957

New York: Museum of Primitive Art. Very Good. 1957. First Edition. Paperback. (32) pages; Clean and secure in original pictorial wrappers. Features 39 illustrated wonderful works of primitive sculpture -- Easter Island, Polynesia, Africa, Middle America. Preface by Nelson A. Rockefeller, introduction by Robert Goldwater. From the collection of Stefan P. Munsing [1915-1994] who worked in New York City as a designer for Hans Knoll, Norman Bel Geddes and RCA. Munsing served in the Army in World War II, then as Chief of the Monuments, Fine-Arts & Archives Section in Munich. The MFAA was an Army unit locating stolen artworks which had disappeared into the huge Nazi hoards during the war. [The "Monuments Men"] Munsing later joined the U.S. Department of State during the later 1940's and '50's, where he established the State Department's Amerika Haus programs in Munich and Berlin and organized exhibitions and cultural programs in Germany and Austria. In 1955, he was named cultural officer at the American Embassy in London, where he staged exhibitions of such New York artists as Philip Pavia, Paul Jenkins and Ben Shahn and became an important force in the London art world. Munsing returned to the U.S. in the 1960's and 70's where he helped establish the contemporary art collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Washington (now the National Museum of American Art) and headed the State Department's Art in Embassies program. In retirement from the State Department after 1976, Mr. Munsing was a consultant to the American Association of Museums. .