Where Was the Museum for Primitive Art?

Art|Art Museum

The Museum for Primitive Art was a museum in New York City that served as one of the earliest and most influential institutions dedicated to exhibiting and preserving non-Western works of art. Founded by Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1954, the museum was located on West 54th Street and Fifth Avenue, in a wing of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), which Rockefeller had also helped to found.

The Museum for Primitive Art collected art from around the world, including works from Africa, Oceania, Indigenous North America, South America, and Asia. Its mission statement declared that it was dedicated to “the collection, study and exhibition of the art of primitive peoples”. It was a highly influential institution that sought to establish primitive art as an independent field of aesthetics.

The museum’s collection contained over 5,000 objects from various societies across five continents. These included masks, sculptures, wood carvings, pottery and textiles from cultures such as those from Ghana’s Ashanti tribe and Melanesia’s Trobriand Islanders. In addition to its extensive permanent collection, the museum also hosted special exhibitions with works loaned from other institutions all over the world.

In 1974 the collection was transferred to The Metropolitan Museum of Art after Rockefeller’s death; The Met made it an independent department called ‘The Department of Primitive Art’ which is still active today. With its transfer came a renewed focus on research and education programs which have continued to be major aspects of The Met’s mission ever since.

The legacy of the Museum for Primitive Art can still be seen today through its influence on modern scholarship on non-Western aesthetics; it is widely regarded as having been fundamental in establishing primitive art as an important field in its own right. It was also one of the first museums to truly recognize the aesthetic value in works often overlooked by other institutional collections at the time – setting a precedent for how we view non-Western artwork today.

Where Was The Museum For Primitive Art? The original location for this influential institution was on West 54th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City within a wing of MOMA which Rockefeller had helped found. In 1974 it was transferred to The Metropolitan Museum where its legacy lives on until this day through research programs and educational initiatives dedicated to exploring non-Western aesthetics.