Walter Arensberg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter Arensberg (born in 1878 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, died in 1954). His father was part owner and president of a crucible steel company. He majored in English and philosophy at Harvard University. He was a poet, who with his wife Louise (1879-1953), collected art and supported artistic endeavors.
Between 1913 and 1950 the couple collected the works of Modern artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Charles Sheeler, Walter Pach, Beatrice Wood, and Elmer Ernest Southard, as well as Pre-Columbian art. They donated their collection the Philadelphia Museum of Art including correspondence, ephemera, clippings, writings, personal and art collection records, and photographs documenting the couple's art collecting activities as well as their friendship with many important artists, writers and scholars.
Intrigued with writer Francis Bacon, particularly the aspects of alchemy, cryptography, Rosicrucianism, and, inevitably, the Shakespeare-Bacon debate, the Arensbergs researched his work. In 1937 they established the Francis Bacon Foundation in Los Angeles intending to promote "research in history, philosophy, science, literature, and art, with special reference to the life and works of Francis Bacon."
