[citation needed] Arensberg's first major book, The Cryptography of Dante (1921) was greeted as a literary scandal because of its deeply Freudian interpretation of the text.
In The secret grave of Francis Bacon and his mother in the Lichfield chapter house (1923) and The Shakespearean mystery (1928) he used a "key cipher" to find further messages connected with the Rosicrucians.[which?
[4] Between 1913 and 1950 the couple collected the works of Modern artists such as Jean Metzinger,[5] Marcel Duchamp,[1] Charles Sheeler, Walter Pach, and Beatrice Wood,[1] as well as Pre-Columbian art; they were assisted by dealer Earl L. Stendahl.
They first lived in Residence A, a guest house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright on Olive Hill, a property owned by Aline Barnsdall.
[6] Intrigued with writer Francis Bacon, particularly the aspects of alchemy, cryptography, Rosicrucianism, and, inevitably, the Shakespeare-Bacon debate, the Arensbergs researched his work.
With the failing health of the collection's longtime librarian and curator, Elizabeth Wrigley, the Foundation decided to transfer it to the Huntington Library in San Marino.
In 1941, a group around actors Vincent Price, Edward G. Robinson, Fanny Brice, and Sam Jaffe tried to get the collection to stay on the West Coast, for the Modern Institute of Art in Beverly Hills.
[6] In 1949, Daniel Catton Rich and Katherine Kuh organized the first public exhibition of the Arensberg collection, held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949.
[12] For the exhibition Making Mischief: Dada Invades New York in 1996, the Whitney Museum of American Art partially recreated the interior of the Manhattan apartment of the Arensbergs.
[13] 'Hollywood Arensberg', by Mark Nelson, William H. Sherman, and Ellen Hoobler, provides a room-by-room, wall-by-wall, and object-by-object reconstruction of the couple’s Los Angeles home and art collection.