ART on view 86 FIG. 9: René D’Harnoncourt, Catalogue and Desiderata—African Negro Art notebook, page 60-D. The Museum of Primitive Art Records, Visual Resource Archive, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. René d’Harnoncourt’s “Catalogue and Desiderata” and the Museum of Primitive Art’s Exhibition Program By Yaëlle Biro, Assistant Curator for the Arts of Africa In order to advise Nelson Rockefeller on what would become one of the world’s great collections of non-Western art, René d’Harnoncourt devised a systematized process for focusing acquisition goals. The template for the collection that he established took the form of four looseleaf notebooks titled Catalogue and Desiderata, which were dedicated to African, Oceanic, Native American, and Precolumbian arts.1 The notebooks combined sketches by d’Harnoncourt— an expert draftsman—and thumbnail photographs. The drawings reproduced works published in the seminal books and exhibition catalogs that he considered “ideal” to be attained for the Rockefeller Collection. The photographs were added as he acquired related examples from New York private galleries (figs. 9, 10, 11). Each notebook includes a map and bibliography. Differences among the notebooks reflect d’Harnoncourt’s own areas of expertise. Given that he was especially wellversed in arts from the Americas, he did not feel the need to rely on this system to the same degree as for African and Oceanic art. Accordingly, the two notebooks dedicated to the Americas are comparatively thin.2 The notebooks document the development of a canon of “primitive art” during the first half of the twentieth century, as well as New York’s market for these arts during the 1950s. In contrast to the highly personal though systematic method established by d’Harnoncourt to select new acquisitions during the early 1950s, Robert Goldwater, a distinguished critic and professor of art history at Queens College and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, professionalized the acquisition process from the moment he was hired as director just a few months before the Museum of Primitive Art’s official opening in 1957. In his leading role at the MPA, he enforced a strict art historical approach that blended a keen awareness of the works’ aesthetics with thorough research on the context of their creation. Documents relating to acquisitions made by the MPA before and after 1956 reveal two distinct approaches: As d’Harnoncourt limited his concept of “primitive art” to a preexisting canon and acquisitions made from a small number of providers, Goldwater expanded beyond that established framework.3 He also often reached out to colleagues throughout Europe and FIG. 10: René D’Harnoncourt, Catalogue and Desiderata—African Negro Art notebook, page 12-D. AR.1999.31.1. The Museum of Primitive Art Records, Visual Resource Archive, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
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