Exhibition dates: May 22 – August 19, 2007
Press Preview: Monday, May 21, 10:00 a.m. – noon
Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings: The Clark Brothers Collect will bring together for the first time celebrated masterpieces once owned by rival brother collectors Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1956), founder of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Stephen Carlton Clark (1882-1960), a former trustee and illustrious donor to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featuring more than 65 paintings, the exhibition will provide a unique opportunity to appreciate the remarkable legacies of two brothers – heirs to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune and native New Yorkers – who played notable but ultimately divergent roles as patrons of the arts in the United States.
Never before seen ensemble, the most treasured paintings from Sterling Clark's collection, including works by such 19th-century masters as Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Homer, and Sargent, will be seen side-by-side with commanding works by Cézanne, Seurat, Matisse, Picasso, Eakins, and Hopper, which held pride of place in Stephen Clark's collection.
The exhibition is made possible by the Janice H. Levin Fund and The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation.
Additional support is provided by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund.
The exhibition was organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings: The Clark Brothers Collect affords a rare and revealing look at the parallel collections formed by the two brothers who were estranged for most of their adult lives but who shared a passion for art anchored by a mutual interest in French painting of the late 19th century. Sterling Clark's renowned holdings of the Impressionists and their American contemporaries – quietly assembled with an eye to establishing a museum in his own name – are represented by an outstanding group of loans from the Clark Art Institute, including Renoir's famous Girl with Sleeping Cat and At the Concert of 1880, Monet's Tulip Fields at Sassenheim, near Leiden, and Sargent's signature views of Venice. A complementary selection of paintings will highlight Stephen Clark's bolder and broader activities as a collector and donor, reuniting in all their glory works by artists ranging from Manet to Picasso and from Eakins to Hopper that he gave to American museums, large and small, or, as in the case of Matisse, that he dispersed by sale. The exhibition will provide a rich context for appreciating the heritage of such treasured paintings in the Metropolitan Museum as Renoir's A Waitress at Duval's Restaurant, Cézanne's The Card Players, and Seurat's Circus Sideshow, which were among the masterpieces in Stephen Clark's 1960 bequest to the museum.
Sterling Clark maintained a fiercely private lifestyle devoted to collecting, traveling, and breeding racehorses. The opening of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in 1955 brought his formidable holdings to light. In contrast, Stephen
Clark was a dynamic public figure, actively involved in politics, philanthropic
projects, and arts organizations. He established several museums, including the National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame in the family's hometown of Cooperstown, New York, while serving on the boards of a number of cultural institutions, most notably the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, where he was president of the board of trustees from 1939 to 1946. In 1960, his magnificent bequest divided the major contents of his collection between the art museum of his alma mater, Yale University, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Exhibited in a suite of six rooms in the Metropolitan Museum's Nineteenth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture Galleries, highlights of the show will include a trio of iconic masterpieces from the same period – Cézanne's The Card Players, Van Gogh's The Night Café, and Seurat's Circus Sideshow – displayed together for the first time since they left Stephen Clark's Upper East Side townhouse. Other highlights on view at the Met: Bonnard's The Breakfast Room, Hopper's Sunlight in a Cafeteria and House by the Railroad (the first painting to enter the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection, courtesy of Stephen Clark), plus masterworks by Corot, Degas, Homer, Manet, Matisse, and Renoir.
Exhibition Credits and Catalogue
This exhibition is organized at the Metropolitan Museum by Susan Alyson Stein, Curator, Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art.
Exhibition design is by Michael Langley, Exhibition Designer, with graphic design by Constance Norkin, Graphic Designer, and lighting by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Designers, all of the Museum's Design Department.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and distributed by Yale University Press. The catalogue is available in the Metropolitan Museum's bookshops ($65 hardcover and $45 paperback).
Audio Guides
An audio tour, part of the Metropolitan's Audio Guide program, will be available for rental ($7, $6 for members, and $5 for children under 12).
The Audio Guide program is sponsored by Bloomberg.
Educational Programs
A variety of education programs will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition. Highlights include a Sunday at the Met on June 17 with lectures by Michael Conforti, director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, lecturing on The Art of Patronage: The Story of Sterling and Stephen Clark, and An American Masterpiece: Stephen C. Clark's Cooperstown, given by Paul S. D'Ambrosio, vice president and chief curator of the Fenimore Art Museum. The feature film, East of Eden, will play Saturday, June 30. Find more information on the Museum's Web site at www.metmuseum.org.
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May 18, 2007
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