Way back in 2009 when the guys and I went to NYC to work on The Met we were told that we were there in small part because the Rockefellers wanted us.
Well, not us per se, but the part of the museum we were to install film on contained primitive works of art collected by Michael Rockefeller and the family wanted the art better protected.
May of 2009 we installed 10,000 sq.ft. of film here:

At that time we heard the rumor that Michael Rockefeller had disappeared in the early 60's, somewhere in Papua New Guinea, and it was suspected that he was eaten by cannibals.


Turns out:

Michael Rockefeller killed, eaten by headhunters: claim

In the new book 'Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art,' author Carl Hoffman lays out evidence to support the shocking claim.

BY SHERRYL CONNELLY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
PUBLISHED: SATURDAY, MARCH 15, 2014, 4:30 PM

ANONYMOUS/AP

A 1973 photo of chief Ajam of the Dani Tribe who told missionaries he killed Michael Rockefeller.

It's a horrific scenario.

A young man, scion of one of America’s most storied families, struggles through an incredible 18-hour swim in the Arafura Sea. Finally, shore is at hand.

So, it seems, is rescue. A nest of eight canoes floats at the mouth of the Etwa River, each filled with strong-armed men who can pull him to safety. His last strength brings him into their midst.Michael Rockefeller seen with New Guinea natives.

A 10-foot spear plunges into his chest while he is still in the water. Soon he will be gutted through a deep cut from anus to neck, his limbs cooked over an open fire and greedily eaten.

In the new book, “Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art,” veteran journalist Carl Hoffman unveils significant evidence that 23-year-old Michael Rockefeller died at the hands of headhunters, and not at sea, late in 1961.

Hoffman, a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler, traveled twice to New Guinea, all but embedding himself in the local tribes for months, to uncover the grim tale.

In his new book, author Carl Hoffman makes the case that Michael Rockefeller died at the hands of headhunters in 1961.

Rockefeller was certainly arrogant, the entitled son of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who thought himself immune to risk. But he and his powerful family — his great grandfather, John D., was once the richest man in America — were also lied to by the Dutch that governed Netherlands New Guinea.

The Rockefellers were assured that cannibalism was a thing of the past, though the fact was remote tribes hadn’t gotten the message. Headhunting raids by one village on another continued even as the Dutch, readying the colony for independence, told the world another story.

BARRY WILLIAMS/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
(The picture above shows the interior of the windows we installed film on.)

Bisj poles on display in the Rockefeller wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art were among the objects collected by Michael Rockefeller on his final expedition.

Rockefeller himself was in New Guinea to create an alternate narrative to his life story. A recent graduate of Harvard, the young man was expected to find his place in the family business, working for his inheritance.

But he saw another way, one that blended art-world glamour with adventure. His father, a figure of considerable influence and glamour in New York, and later the nation when he served as vice president, had recently opened the Museum of Primitive Art in Manhattan. Its social cachet was enormous.

How better could a young man, who had a long-expressed interest in both art and exotic travel, carve a new place for himself in the family pantheon than to seize the opportunity to join an academic expedition intent on documenting the rituals of a far-flung primitive tribe, the Dani. From there he would strike out on his own to acquire primitive art to bring home to the new museum.

Michael (top, third from right) with his famous family. Dad Nelson (seated), was then governor of New York and a future vice president, and Michael went to New Guinea to collect pieces for father’s museum, including bisj poles (far r.) still on display in the Met..

“If you can believe it, I’m finally in New Guinea,” Rockefeller wrote home in March of 1961.

The Dani were a peaceable tribe, made so by the agricultural yield of the hospitable highlands. It was an entirely different story on the southwest coast of New Guinea, the tribal area of the Asmat, where Rockefeller would venture in November to hunt art among the headhunters.

There the men were lean and hard, their bodies scarred from tribal warfare. Murder had been elevated to a sacred ritual that also served their appetites. Neither the sea nor surrounding swamps surrendered much in the way of edible protein.

Michael Rockefeller seen with father Nelson.

RELATED: BONEYARDS THE BURDENS OF NELSON ROCKEFELLER, NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1961 CHAPTER 309:

“What the Asmat had done regularly had crossed a line uncommon in human history, even in traditional hunter-and-gathering societies,” Hoffman writes of the culture of cannibalism that existed a half-century before he arrived in New Guinea in 2012.

“The most horrific, most monstrous thing we could think of had been central to their everyday way of life.”

The rugged New Guinea coast was where, according to author Hoffman, Michael Rockefeller met his gruesome end.

Even children were not exempt. Headhunting raids were carried out in the spirit of revenge. The righteous, to avenge the killing of their own tribe members, would descend on a village and spare no living thing.

The blood of victims would be rubbed into 20-foot tall bisj poles, carved by a tribe to honor the murdered among them. Four of these poles, collected by Rockefeller on his fatal journey, stand in the Michael C. Rockefeller wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Rockefeller — described by others as an otherwise earnest and kind man — embarked on his final expedition to collect art for his father’s museum, blinded by entitlement, Hoffman writes. Rockefeller seemed to presume his father’s fortune could buy him any resource in a region so impoverished there was nothing for money to buy.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Michael Rockefeller, 23, youngest son of the New York Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, is shown operating outboard a motor boat in New Guinea.

Lacking transportation, he convinced a Dutch patrol officer, Wim van de Waal, to sell him his private catamaran — then had to be talked out of having a huge outboard motor flown in to power it.

Having made a quick trip home to New York after news broke that his father was divorcing his mother to marry socialite Margaretta (Happy) Murphy, he returned to set out on his last foray. Rockefeller was accompanied only by René Wassing, an anthropologist, and two local teenagers. The lack of an Asmat guide was a big mistake.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Michael Rockefeller shown in a canoe in New Guinea during a trip the summer before he disappeared.

In 1958, a Dutch official, Max Lapré had set out to end a headhunting war between two Asmat villages accompanied by a force of armed policemen. In the village of Otsjanep they were confronted by men armed with bows, arrows and spears who broke into a warrior dance.

Lapré left five dead. He also believed that he had forcibly convinced the natives that the Dutch wouldn’t tolerate headhunting. The truth was, he had created an atavistic need amongst the men of Otsjanep for revenge against a white man.

It was into these roiled waters that Rockefeller steered his boat three years later. When the catamaran filled with water and the night passed without rescue, Rockefeller decided to strike out for shore, unaware he was swimming in the direction of warriors still seething for revenge.

It so happened that the angered survivors of the Otsjanep raid were on a trading trip that brought them to the mouth of the Etwa River just as Rockefeller would have reached shore.

The massive manhunt for Rockefeller launched by the Dutch turned up no evidence he had drowned, even though that was the official conclusion presented to his father.

The story stood even after details of the cannibalism, filed by Dutch Catholic missionaries with close ties to the Otsjanep, surfaced in an Associated Press article in 1962.

Hoffman interviewed Father Hubertus von Peij, who contributed to the report. He says the villagers told him that Rockefeller’s head — small, like a child’s — was claimed by a villager to hang in his hut. The bones of the “white man” had been distributed throughout the tribe to sharpen into weapons.

Von Peij was forbidden to talk by church superiors but his account was buttressed by those of others who had access to the tribes. A Dutch patrol officer whom Hoffman interviewed handed remains collected from the Otsjanep to a superior but never heard another word.

The Dutch had a great deal invested in making their colony appear ready to join civilization. But Hoffman finds the accounts of the descendants of the Otsjanep, whom he spent months drawing close to in the village muck, more credible.

Everywhere, he reports, is tribal knowledge that Michael Rockefeller met his death that day at the end of a warrior’s spear. His remains were disposed of according to custom over an open fire, the evidence hungrily consumed.

SCONNELLY@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/michael-rockefeller-killed-eaten-headhunters-claim-article-1.1722883#ixzz2wKw0tKiL