April 4, 1878 [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania] – January 29, 1954 [Los Angeles, California]
Walter Conrad Arensberg was an American art collector, critic and poet. He majored in English and philosophy at Harvard University. Among his literary critical works are The Cryptography of Dante (1921) and The Cryptography of Shakespeare (1922) which, through an analysis of acrostics and anagrams in the works of Shakespeare, argued that the plays were in fact by Francis Bacon. He was long a champion of avant-garde literature and art and mingled with the Others crowd (that included William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore) in New York. He published two volumes of Symbolist-influenced verse, 1914’s Poems and 1916’s Idols, along with several more experimental poems in Dada journals including Rogue, The Blind Man, 391 and TNT. Having befriended many of the European avant-garde artists in New York, notably Marcel Duchamp, Arensberg eventually assembled one of the greatest collection of Modernist art in the country, if not the world, including all of the major works of Duchamp. Arensberg and his wife, Louise, moved to Hollywood in 1921 only intending to stay temporarily but the move was permanent. Though there is no evidence that Arensberg wrote more poetry in Los Angeles (hence, the present collection only contains work written in New York), he was central to the literature and art scene in the city until his death. He tried and failed to reach an agreement with the University of California, Los Angeles, to house his collection, and his offer of donating the pieces to LACMA was rejected. Eventually in 1950, the work found a home at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where it still is.
