The Wurtzburger Collections of PRIMITIVE ART - Pre-Columbian - Oceanic - Africa

Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art. Very Good+. 1958. First Edition Thus. Hardcover. Wurtzburger Collections; 46; 40; 30 pages; Clean and secure in original gray pictorial boards. This hardcover edition includes the catalogues of the Three Divisions of the Wurtzburger Collections -- The Alan Wurtzburger Collection of Pre-Columbian Art; The Alan Wurtzburger Collection of Oceanic Art January 7 to March 4, 1956; and The Alan Wurtzburger Collection of African Sculpture. Glossy wrappers for each of the three catalogues are bound in. 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. .