Interior of Arensberg apartment, 33 West Sixty-Seventh Street, New York

In this photograph, Charles Sheeler immortalizes the New York apartment of Louise and Walter Arensberg, where, from 1915 through 1920, they hosted a daily salon for members of the international avant-garde. Beginning in the early 1910s, De Zayas helped the Arensbergs assemble one of the most daring art collections of their time. This photograph attests to De Zayas’s influence: as in his own galleries, the Arensbergs’ living room features juxtapositions of African and pre-Columbian art, with paintings by the likes of Matisse, Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp. Most striking is the parallel display on the mantelpiece of Brancusi’s 1915 sculpture The Prodigal Son at the far left and a Fang reliquary figure at the far right (on view in the present exhibition immediately to your right). To create a visual echo between both sculptures, the Fang figure has been positioned on a cylindrical marble pedestal, imitating one of Brancusi’s signatures.