Robert Sterling Clark, heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune, and his wife Francine founded The Clark Art Institute Their private collection (Clark bought the first of his 36 Renoirs in 1918) is now open to the public year-round. Though probably best known for the many examples of Renoir, Monet, Degas and French 19th-century works, the aggregation, which spans the Renaissance through the late-nineteenth century, continues to grow by purchase and gift. American artists, including Frederick Remington and Winslow Homer, are also well represented.
This museum, according to the learned Cheryl Ingalls, is distinguished by not only the depth and breadth of the collection, but the fact that it is largely the result of the Clark's vision for what was "good" and what was not, at a time that many of the most treasured works were not even considered important enough to collect (this before the Renoirs and other French Impressionists were as considered as monetarily "valuable" as they later became). The Clark's artistic tastes were of a very savory 19th Century sensibility and included acquisitions of works by Italian and Flemish Renaissance painters like Ugolino da Siena and Piero della Francesca, as well as other Impressionist works by Monet, Degas and Pissarro and important American artists like Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. For five decades they collected what felt right to them, and their once-private collection now enriches the world at large.
In addition to being a museum, the Clark's work as an important art center is exemplified by its world class art reference library(containing over 150,000 printed books) and the Graduate Program in the History of Art, administered jointly by the Clark and nearby Williams College. The Institute also houses the Bibliography of the History of Art and the Williamstown Art Conservation Center, Inc. Daniel Perry was architect of the original 1955 Clark building. |
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
