Clark, Anthony M., 1923-1976

These papers of Fogg Art Museum directors John Coolidge and Agnes Mongan document their administration of the museum and related professional activities. Most of Coolidge's papers were created during his administration, from 1948 to 1968; most of Mongan's papers are from her tenure as acting director and then director (1968 to 1971). The papers consist primarily of correspondence, including Coolidge's correspondence with art dealers, and also include photographs, memoranda, reports, meeting minutes, blueprints, printed material, letters of recommendation, page proofs, financial documents, sketches and grant proposals.

(Anthony M. Clark is listed as a correspondent in the collection's finding aid)

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Museum director; Metropolitan Museum of art curator and specialist in Roman baroque painting. He was raised in a Quaker household. Clark’s boyhood fascination with birds led him to consider a career in ornithology. However, he graduated from Harvard in 1945 with a degree in fine arts. The following ten years he spent as a working artist. After World War II, Clark painted in New York, joining the American Abstract Artists’ Association. Beginning in 1948, he toured Europe. Although he was looking for inspirational material, his interests were gradually changing to art history and specifically, 18th-century Roman painting. He worked as a field working in the excavation sites in Istanbul of the Byzantine Institute, repainting the Chora’s frescos and the Pantocrator’s inlaid floor, he returned to the United States in 1955. He worked as the first secretary to the museum of the Rhode Island School of design, under John Maxon. There, Clark demonstrated his interest in seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian art, and particularly Pompeo Batoni. In 1959 he left Rhode Island, accepting one of the first two David M. Finley fellowships at the National Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C. Clark spent the fellowship in Rome, where he became known as “Batoni Clark.” When the fellowship concluded in 1961, Clark became curator of painting for the Minneapolis Institute of Art, rising to Director in 1963. He was credited at the Museum of doubling the collections, tripling attendance, and making the museum bulletin into a scholarly publication. The new building, though completed after his departure, was largely due to his planning. In 1973, Clark accepted the offer to become Curator of European Painting at the Metropolitan Museum, under the quixotic Thomas Hoving. Clark mounted two major exhibitions at the Met. Impressionism: A Centenary and The Age of Revolution: French Painting, 1774-1830. Both shows met which huge acclaim. The latter exhibition, however, after touring Paris and Detroit, was greatly reduced in size for the Metropolitan exhibit at Hoving’s insistence. Clark disagreed on intellectual grounds, insisting that the fifty paintings to be cut were in fact crucial to the integrity of the exhibition. Hoving won out, and Clark, resigned shortly thereafter in public accusations of Hoving’s meddling. Another curator, John Walsh, Jr., also resigned during this time. Hoving replaced Clark more than a year later with John Pope-Hennessy. Clark was named adjunct professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, and a Clark professor at Williams College, Williamstown, MA. He was named a fellow at the American Academy in Rome and moved there to complete work on his survey of Roman baroque painting. While jogging in the Villa Doria-Pamphili park in Rome, he succumbed to a heart attack. He was 53. His magnum opus on Batoni was completed by Edgard P. Bowron in 1985. Clark held the reputation of having been a publishing curator, producing a significant body of scholarly material while at the same time directly administering major museums.

Anthony M. Clark, director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts from 1963 to 1973 and chairman of the department of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1973 until his resignation last year, died of a heart attack in Rome on Monday. He was 53 years old and lived at 970 Park Avenue.

Mr. Clark, considered one of the top museum men in this country, was adjunct professor at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and Clark Professor at Williams College. He was also at work on two books in areas he specialized in a history of painting in Rome in the 18th century and a biography of Pompeo Batoni, 18th‐century Italian painter.

During his 10 years as director in Minneapolis, attendance at the arts institute tripled, its collections were doubled in size and importance, four new curatorships were established, exceptionally active community programs were maintained, and a large, new museum building was conceived, financed and begun. Mr. Clark also found time to publish a catalogue of European paintings in the institute's collection. It is among the most admired publications of its kind. He became internationally known for the flair and the tenacity with which he sought out important new acquisitions for Minneapolis.

In 1973, he was appointed chairman of the department of European paintings at the Metropolitan. During his two years there, he was responsible for “Impressionism: A Centenary,” which proved the most popular exhibition that the museum had had to date, and for “The Age of Revolution: French Painting 1774–1830.” First shown in Paris and Detroit, it was considerably reduced in scale for its showing at the Met.

Mr. Clark strongly disapproved of this and for that and other reasons he resigned from the Met in protest against what he described as “the unprofessional and unworthy behavior of the museum's administration.” The decision was widely applauded by other museum professionals.

Anthony Morris Clark was born Oct. 12, 1923, in the Chestnut Hill area of Philaand Dorothy Clark. After graduating with honors from Chestnut Hill Academy in 1941, he considered becoming a professional ornithologist, but eventually graduated tram Harvard University in thu class of ‘45, having concentrated on thu fine arts.

From 1945 to 1949, Mr. Clark lived in New York and worked as a painter, becoming a member of the American Abstract Artists Association. His work was shown at the Philadelphia Arts Alliance in 1948. In 1950, he lectured on contem porary New York painting at the seminar run in Salzburg, Austria, by Harvard, University, and thereafter he traveled in Italy, Greece, Denmark, Switzerland and England, painting and studying the his tory of art at first hand. In 1954, he worked with the Byzantine Institute in Istanbul. Turkey, cleaning and restoring Byzantine frescoes and mosaics.

From 1955 to 1959, he was secretary to the museum and director of publications at the Rhode Island School of Design. It was during that time that he began to feel drawn toward the subject of 18th‐century Rome and began the long series of scholarly articles in that field that quickly earned him a worldwide reputation. From 1959 to 1961, he was one of the first David M. Finley Fellows at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and, in 1961, he was appointed curator of paintings and sculpture at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He became director two years later.

“Except for Sherman Lee, the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art,” John Walsh Jr., a former colleague of Mr. Clark at the Met, said yesterday, “Tony Clark had the most active scholarly career of any museum director in this country. He was a big human being, in volved in weighty affairs, but he had time for everyone. He lived and breathed pictures. With very little money, he built up the only big, diversified collection of Roman 18th‐century art, which is now in private hands, He was a great listener. He had an unmatched instinct for exceptional gifts in younger people, and he knew just how to bring them out.”

Mr. Clark is survived by his father and stepmother.