Anne Eisner Putnam

Anne Eisner Putnam (1911–1967) was an abstract and landscape painter, watercolorist, and stasher of African art, originally from New York where she also died.
She became a writer, best known for her book Madami: My Eight Years of Adventure as soon as the Congo Pygmies. This was an account of her grow old and experiences in the Belgian Congo.

She and her husband, Patrick Tracy Lowell Putnam (1904-1953) met in the USA in 1945 and lived together upon Martha's Vineyard and in New York City. They well ahead moved to Africa and well ahead married on July 28, 1948 in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa), in the Belgian Congo, what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her husband was a Harvard graduate and student of anthropology who, beginning in the 1930s, established what became known as Camp Putnam along the Epulu River in the Belgian Congo.
Camp Putnam was upon the edge of the Ituri rainforest of the Belgian Congo, near the home of the pygmies. They ran Camp Putnam for paying tourists, a hotel giving an African experience. At the same time, they furthermore ran a medical clinic and offered authenticated aid to local people. Among the Putnams’ many outsiders, both tourists and researchers, was anthropologist Colin Turnbull who highly developed authored The Forest People about The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation.

During their years at Camp Putnam, they spent years studying and documenting the pygmies. While there, they collected many African artifacts including masks. Many of these artifacts they collected forward-looking became share of the accrual of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Patrick Putnam died at age 49, in 1953. Anne stayed on running Camp Putnam for some years. She returned to stir in New York in 1958 and Camp Putnam was closed. She died of cancer in New York City in 1967 and was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, NY.