Clark Art Institute receives $90m gift of British paintings and cash
WILLIAMSTOWN -- The Clark Art Institute, long known as a home for French and American paintings, is making room for a $90 million British invasion thanks to a donation from the foundation of Sir Edwin Manton.
Works by Renoir, Monet, Homer, and Sargent will now share space with a flood of Turners, Constables, Gainsboroughs, and other pieces from the English Romantic period of the early 1800s that were owned by Manton, a driving force behind AIG Insurance who died in 2005 at 96.
The new pieces include about 200 oil paintings, watercolors, and studies valued at about $40 million. They come with a $50 million cash donation, making the gift the largest the Clark has received since it opened in 1955.
"This is a very big deal," said Franklin Kelly, senior curator of American and British art for the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. "This makes the Clark a very important center for study in British art."
The Clark already has a healthy endowment of $340 million and has become a well-known training ground for art historians. But the money from the Manton Foundation will allow the museum to greatly expand its research abilities, director Michael Conforti said.
"We have always said we are as much a research center as we are an art center," he said. "We have scholars coming from all over the world, and now we'll be able to support even more academic conversations."
In recognition of the donation, the museum will rename the building that houses its research and academic program the Sir Edwin and Lady Manton Research Center.
The museum does have a smattering of British paintings and featured a Turner exhibit in 2003. But the works from England so far have amounted to what Conforti calls a "modest core collection."
"The Clark is a heavily French place," Kelly said. "If you're going to have the presence of England in that mix of paintings, you need the best. You need these Gainsboroughs and Turners and Constables."
Manton moved to New York from England in 1933 and joined AIG. He became president of the company in 1942, and served as its chairman from 1969 to 1974. While the art he collected wasn't displayed publicly, he played an active role in the art world. He became one of the most generous contributors to the Tate in London and established the American Patrons of the Tate in 1988.
