Michael Clark Rockefeller was born in 1938. He was the youngest son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and the newest member of a dynasty of millionaires founded by his famous great-grandfather, John D. Rockefeller — one of the richest people who ever lived.
Though his father expected him to follow in his footsteps and help manage the family’s vast business empire, Michael was a quieter, more artistic spirit. When he graduated from Harvard in 1960, he wanted to do something more exciting than sit around in boardrooms and conduct meetings.
His father, a prolific art collector, had recently opened the Museum of Primitive Art, and its exhibits, including Nigerian, Aztec, and Mayan works, entranced Michael.
He decided to seek out his own “primitive art” (a term no longer in use that referred to non-Western art, particularly that of Indigenous peoples) and took a position on the board of his father’s museum.
It was here that Michael Rockefeller felt he could make his mark. Karl Heider, a graduate student of anthropology at Harvard who worked with Michael, recalled, “Michael said he wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before and to bring a major collection to New York.”
He had traveled extensively already, living in Japan and Venezuela for months at a time, and he craved something new: he wanted to embark on an anthropological expedition to a place few would ever see.
After talking with representatives from the Dutch National Museum of Ethnology, Michael decided to make a scouting trip to what was then known as Dutch New Guinea, a massive island off the coast of Australia, to collect the art of the Asmat people who resided there.
Hellbound and Down 