displayed at the Brooklyn Museum in New York in 1924, in Chicago in 1925, he even travelled to Egypt and Palestine in 1927. In 1927 he entered a design for the coins of the Irish Free State, and though his design arrived too late for consideration it was adopted in 1965 as the seal of the Central Bank of Ireland. Second World War During the April War in 1941 Meštrović was living in Split. After being warned by novelist and Independent State of Croatia (NDH) minister Mile Budak that the Croatian authorities could not guarantee his safety in Split, he moved to Zagreb in September 1941. Meštrović and painter Jozo Kljaković were arrested by the Ustaše in Zagreb on 7 November 1941, ostensibly due to the regime's fears that the two would emigrate. He eventually served three and a half months in the Savska Cesta prison. With help from archbishop Aloysius Stepinac and subsequently the Vatican he was released, on condition that he travel to Venice to attend the Independent State of Croatia pavilion at the Venice Biennale. From there he relocated to Rome, where he stayed and worked at the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome. He was sponsored here by Fra Dominik Mandić, and during his time in the city was received by Pope Pius XII. In July 1943, Meštrović secured a visa to Switzerland through NDH diplomat Stijepo Perić and moved there. Not all of his family managed to escape — his first wife Ruža died in 1942 and many from her Jewish family were murdered in the Holocaust. Later, his brother Petar was imprisoned for publicly advising Ivan not to return to the country. Marshal Josip Broz Tito's government in Yugoslavia eventually invited Meštrović to return, but he refused to do so. In 1946, Syracuse University offered him a professorship, and he moved to the United States. He became the first artist of Croatian origin to exhibit his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 1947. From 1951 he began making contributions to the Croatian emigrant journal Hrvatska revija, which would later publish his memoirs. He was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for sculpture in 1953. President Dwight D. Eisenhower personally presided over the 1954 ceremony granting Meštrović American citizenship. He went on to become a professor at the University of Notre Dame in 1955. At