Draft:Alfred Honigbaum

A collector of Latin American and Asian art, Alfred Honigbaum used the income he made in the California fruit industry to collect art and support artists in the 1930s. One item from his personal collection is Tehuantepec Costume,. an oil portrait of Áurea Procel, the first female doctor in Mexico. The painting was on display in the Diego Rivera's America exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art until January 3, 2023. The exhibition reopens at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on March 11, 2023.

Early life and career
Alfred Honigbaum was born on March 4, 1882 in Münsterberg, Germany (now Ziębice, Poland). At age 19, he left Germany for the United States on the S.S. Deutschland in 1901. Honigbaum spent his career at Rosenberg Bros, a dried fruit company with profitable operations throughout California, known for benevolence towards its employees. Passport applications, ship manifests, and trade journals document his travels as he pursued global markets for California's fruit

Art patronage
Movie reels Honigbaum shot while touring Oaxaca, México in January, 1936 with Diego Rivera are now housed and preserved at the Bancroft Library. One segment he filmed at Rivera's Casa-Estudio in Mexico City show Rivera, with a monkey perched on his shoulder, as he kisses Marian Greenwood, the American painter. This footage appears at minute 22 in the documentary Frida on Amazon Prime.

Honigbaum also purchased numerous portfolios by artists such as Dr. Atl, Roberto Montenegro, and Francisco Díaz De León, which are now at the Bancroft Library. In his published diaries, Edward Weston of Carmel, California mentions Honigbaum multiple times as an important customer; Weston wrote that he ruefully turned down Honigbaum's offer to be included in the Mexico trip. By this time, Honigbaum had already bought and lent works by artists such as Fermín Revueltas, and spent time with Alma Reed and Juan Clemente Orozco. He also lent works from his collection to museum exhibitions.

Trip around the world and a journal
In 1930, Honigbaum joined Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias, and his bride, Rosa Rolanda, during their extended honeymoon in Bali. He kept a travel journal listing his destinations from Honolulu through to Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East; this journal is being donated to the Bancroft Library. In the travel journal he noted the people he encountered, which included figures from art and politics such as Nelson and Mary Rockefeller, Walter Spies, Leon Trotsky, Meir Dizengoff, Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Marc Chagall. Honigbaum concluded the trip on the SS Europa from Bremen to New York on June 28, 1931.

Rockefeller connection
The Rockefeller Foundation supported work on global health, and in the early 1940s the Foundation took up the issue of Mexican pediatric nutrition, in part due to efforts by Àurea Procel — whose portrait, painted by Diego Rivera in 1929, was soon acquired by Honigbaum. However, Procel herself was sidelined from the effort for political reasons having to do with the previous Mexican presidential administration.

Personal life
Honigbaum's death certificate indicates that he did not marry nor have any children, and that he lived at the Francesca apartment building on San Francisco's Nob Hill until he suffered a heart attack on October 3, 1939, dying two days later at age 57.