The Art of Philanthropy On Display at Clark Institute

It’s the second-best thing to staying in Provence this summer: Philip Conisbee is spending six weeks in Williamstown as a fellow of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. The senior curator of European painting at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is working on a book about Cezanne and his portraits of the gardeners and field workers who worked on his family estate in Provence.

Mr. Conisbee spends most of his days in the Clark’s library, where each fellow has an office. “It’s one of the best art libraries in America,” Mr. Conisbee said. When he is done, he enjoys taking a walk in the woods and hills, or wandering through some of the Clark’s galleries.

“The combination of art and nature is a wonderful experience,” he said.

Some of the work he finds relevant to his own research have just arrived at the Clark: Drawings by Gainsborough and a landscape oil sketch by Constable that were part of the collection of Sir Edwin Manton, valued at some $50 million, which was donated to the museum by his family in June. The gift, highlights of which are on display through September 16, consists of 200 works by British artists of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Mr. Conisbee has other reasons to be excited about the gift: It included an additional $40 million to endow the museum’s research and academic programs, including the fellowship he is on and the library he uses daily.

Mr. Conisbee was on hand Friday evening for the ceremony dedicating the Sir Edwin and Lady Manton Research Center, which houses the library, gallery space, and the Art History masters program it offers with Williams College. Its alumni include the director of MASSMoCA, Joseph Thompson; the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Michael Govan, and the director of the High Museum in Atlanta, Michael Shapiro.

When Sir Edwin Manton died on October 1, 2005, without having determined where to bequeath his collection, the responsibility fell to his daughter, Diana Morton, of Boston, who heads the foundation created upon her father’s death. Standing outside the exhibit of her father’s collection before the dedication ceremony Friday, Mrs. Morton talked about her decision.

“One of my father’s worst fears was that it wouldn’t be seen — that it would go into a basement or something,” Mrs. Morton said. “The Clark is a perfect match.”

Mrs. Morton visited the Clark with her father and mother in the spring of 1960, around the time she was graduated from Smith College.

“It was a brand new museum, it was just lovely. My father enjoyed it,” she said.

She grew up on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where there were always paintings on the walls. But her father didn’t start collecting British artists until after she was at school. Much of what is now on display at the Clark are works she had never seen before.

“I was kind of aware of them,” she said of her father’s acquisitions. “One summer, there was an auction, he was making a telephone bid. But I really didn’t pay attention.”

Asked if she collects art herself, Mrs. Morton said, “Oh no. I’m not a collector. I’ve been trying to get rid of it!”

She did explain why her father was drawn to these works. “A lot of these paintings reminded him of his childhood,” Mrs. Morton said.

The interest in art collecting apparently only skipped one generation. Mrs. Morton’s daughter, Sandy Niles, of Boston, received a master’s degree in art history from Columbia University, where she studied the Raphaelites. She worked at auction houses, including Christie’s, before having two children. The board of the Clark elected Mrs. Niles a trustee in July, and she attended her first board meeting Saturday.

She is joining at an exciting time for the museum. The Clark, like many other museums across the country, is expanding and sprucing up its campus. In the spring of 2008, the Williamstown Art Conservation Center will open in the Stone Hill Center, a new $25 million building designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando and situated far away from the current structures on the 140-acre site. Mr. Ando is also designing a new visitor’s center while architect Annabelle Selldorf is renovating the existing buildings.

The Conservation Center, with a staff of 26 conservators, will be a tenant of the Clark and conduct all of the Clark’s restoration work, as well as serving 55 other museums in the Northeast. Its director, Tom Branchick, and the president of its board, the director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, Laurie Norton Moffatt, both attended the ceremony and celebratory dinner Friday along with numerous trustees of the museum — among them New Yorkers Aso Tavitian, Michael Lynch, and Frederick Beinecke, who all have second homes in the Berkshires.

The design of the center will allow visitors to observe the conservation work. The center, which is available as a naming opportunity for a gift of $10 million — also includes a 2500-square-foot gallery for more small-scale and experimental installations. “One of our hopes is to expand the parameters of the Clark to include modern, contemporary, and non-Western art,” the curator, Richard Rand, said.

The inaugural show at the Stone Hill Center will feature Japanese artists in honor of Mr. Ando. An Ellsworth Kelly show is also programmed in the space.

“The intimacy of the Clark will not change,” the director of the Clark, Michael Conforti, said.

agordon@nysun.com