“From the Vault” is a weekly post highlighting a rare book from the Clark Library’s extensive collection. This week, Collections Management Librarian, Penny Baker, shares the book Professional Criminals of America (1886), by Thomas Byrnes, who served as head of the New York City Police Department detective department from 1880 until 1895.
This is Byrnes:
Here is his preface: 
And here is a selection of “celebrated robbers”:
Click here to read the book!
Posted in From the Vault | Tagged New York City Police Department detective department, Professional Criminals of America, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library, Thomas Byrnes | 2 Comments »
In honor of yesterday’s snowstorm, the Clark staff made this special “View from our Windows” album using our cell phones. We invited our Facebook friends to post photos from their own offices and homes to our wall, expanding the album to include window views from througout the Berkshires.
Whose windows are these? Clockwise from top left, these windows belong to:
the Clark’s Museum Building Reinstallation Project
the Clark’s Web Developer’s office
the Clark’s Library
the Clark’s Publishing and Information Resources office
Terry Clark’s home in Hancock
the Clark’s Associate Registrar’s office
the Clark’s Curatorial office
the Clark’s Director’s Office
Soaring Eagle Lodge in Charlemont, courtesy of Dona Aria
the Clark’s Capital Campaign office
the Clark’s Marketing and Communications office
the office of the Clark’s Director of Special Projects
Storey Publishing
Pittsfield, Central Block looking west
the Clark’s Graphic Design office
Posted in Art and Nature | Tagged charlemont, Facebook album, office window, pittsfield, snowstorm, williamstown, windows | 4 Comments »
By Michael Cassin, Director, Center for Education in the Visual Arts
I don’t often get homesick for Britain, but at this point in the year as we prepare for another New England winter, I do occasionally find myself thinking about summer days in “old” England. Constable’s Wheatfield is all it takes to get the nostalgia going. 
Wheatfield shows the different stages of a harvest. If you look closely, you can see farm laborers at the far edge of the field, scything through the stems of golden wheat while others follow behind them, binding the wheat into sheaves and gleaning—pulling up individual stalks of grain that the reapers have missed. 
Even the little boy on the right is contributing something to the collective workload: he and his dog are not simply lazing around in the sun, they are probably guarding everyone’s lunch so the creatures who live in the fields don’t run off with it into the hedgerows.
The wheat harvest was a big event in a rural community. It usually took place in August, when even the British weather might be reasonably warm and dry. But the British climate is famously changeable—I know, believe me, I used to live in Manchester and Edinburgh, as well as here in “Constable Country.” Constable knows it too, and he gets the uncertain weather conditions just right. The summer sun casts warm shadows across the fields, but clouds are gathering in the sky. The workers had better get a move on if they’re going to get the harvest in before the weather takes a turn for the worse.
Image credit: John Constable (English, 1776– 1837), Wheatfield, 1816. Oil on canvas, 21 1/8 x 30 3/8 in. (53.7 x 77.2 cm). Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA. Gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, 2007.8.27
Posted in A Closer Look, Clark Collection | Tagged Clark Collection, Constable Country, Edinburgh, John Constable, Manchester, Manton Art Foundation, Manton Collection, New England winter, Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, wheat harvest, Wheatfield | 3 Comments »
The Clark Photograph and Clippings Archive contains nearly a million images that were used to teach and study art in the early twentieth century. Sadly, some of these images represent the only remaining documentation of important works of art. The Lost Art Project draws on the Clark’s photograph and clipping collection to highlight these important lost works.
Today’s lost art work is Gartenweg mit Hühnern (Garden Path with Chickens), by Gustav Klimt. 
Among many paintings from the Erich Lederer collection, Garden Path with Chickens (1917) was removed to the Schloss Immendorf in Lower Austria for safekeeping during World War II. When the castle was burned by retreating SS troops in 1945, the painting was destroyed.
Posted in Lost Art Project | Tagged Erich Lederer collection, Garden Path with Chickens, Gustav Klimt, lost art, Schloss Immendorf, ss troops, The Clark Photograph and Clippings Archive, World War II | 2 Comments »
“From the Vault” is a weekly post highlighting a rare book from the Clark Library’s extensive collection. This week, Acquisitions Librarian and Special Projects Officer, Terri Boccia, shares the first issue of fashion designer Rei Kawakubo’s catalogue, Sixth Sense:
From 1988 to 1991, Kawabuko embarked on a bold experiment that transformed the notion of a fashion catalogue from a documentary listing of individual items into an avant-garde fine arts magazine that incidentally included images of the Comme des Garçons line.
She called the publication Sixth Sense, or Six for short, explaining in the premier issue, “‘Six’ is the sixth sense. It is the sense of the surreal. Although the sixth sense is impossible to describe, ‘flair’ may be one aspect of this sense.” Each issue mixed newly commissioned works by the hottest contemporary fashion photographers showcasing Comme des Garçons wardrobe with iconic images created by the masters of photography. Contemporary artists frequently appeared in the issues, both with their art and as models. The overall gritty quality of the prints is evocative of Kawakubo’s design aesthetic.
The Clark is one of a small number of libraries that holds a complete set of Sixth Sense. This issue features highlights from the Comme des Garçons 1988 season, including Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ portraits of contemporary artists dressed in the firm’s Comme line. Particularly notable is a die-cut overlay in a feature on Jean Cocteau, which puts the French Surrealist in a stylish Comme des Garçons suit.
Posted in From the Vault | Tagged Comme des Garçons, Jean Cocteau, Rei Kawakubo, Sixth Sense | 5 Comments »
By Andrew Davis, Museum Building Reinstallation Project
I didn’t set out to plan museum exhibitions. It evolved quite naturally. Early on in the planning of ClarkNOW, the curatorial team knew that the next several years would be extremely busy. Plans for each exhibition would have to be fleshed out on a small, legible scale before becoming reality. I have an aptitude for the kind of meticulous work that makes some people run screaming, as well as the ability to draw accurately from life, think visually and abstractly, and keep pace with the revisions and changes of direction that a project of this scope will always have.
Synergy was magical as we designed Clark Remix, which presents highlights from the Clark’s permanent collection of paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts in a dynamic, interactive space that will allow audiences to engage with the collection in new ways. Clark Remix will be presented in Gallery E, where more than 80 paintings and hundreds of decorative objects will need to fit neatly in a relatively small space. We explored many layouts before selecting a final arrangement of paintings. In this version, a paperboard Reese Witherspoon strolls through a minimally appointed gallery space, enjoying the surfeit of art on the walls.
To ensure we had shelf space for our hundreds of decorative arts objects, I made life-size two-dimensional mock-ups of every teacup, spoon, tankard, mold-blown glass, and porringer on view. Luckily, there were already digital images on file for most of these. First, I made these images actual-size (which sounds easier than it is), then I printed the photos, glued them to mat board, and cut the shapes with an X-Acto knife.
Humble means can achieve impressive ends. For the attractive hardwood floors pictured below, I manipulated a generic digital image into sheets of hardwood wallpaper. I printed them, and then measured and cut them as you might cut wall-to-wall carpeting, and glued them into place.
To really appreciate the high-impact results you can get through low-tech means, just take a look at these life-size paintings I made for Gallery E:
We couldn’t afford to be off by an inch when hanging the Clark’s paintings this densely, so my trusty Sharpie and I made an actual-size stand-in for every work we wanted to use. These are quick studies, done free-hand: first loosely in pencil, then loosely again in marker. Indispensible to our planning, they had the personal benefit of revealing more to me about the collection than I would ever have learned through any research, reading, or hours spent walking through the galleries.
Working in the same scale as the originals allowed me to experience the impact of scale from both the creator’s and spectator’s viewpoints. Making studies from the masters is a time-honored method of learning about art. Reproducing nearly 100 paintings from the Clark’s collection allowed me to walk along with them a bit as they created these artworks in the first place.
Many of the paintings are now on the walls, and the decorative arts are in their cases. We’re nearing completion, and hope you’ll come see the exhibition when it opens on February 12. In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at Clark Remix!
Posted in Clark Remix | Tagged Andrew Davis, Clark Remix, ClarkNOW, curator, exhibition planning, modeling, the Clark | 4 Comments »
By Sarah Lees, Associate Curator of European Art
As the in-house curator for Rembrandt and Degas, an exhibition that was first shown at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, I worked with my colleagues to decide how we would present these prints and paintings at the Clark—meaning both how to place them within our gallery space, and what to say about them.
As I worked on the installation, I realized that I was thinking about the artists in more personal terms than I expected, rather than seeing the show as primarily a set of themes or images. That’s because the exhibition consists entirely of portraits, most of them self-portraits, which means that it’s easier than usual to imagine being the artist as he stood in front of his canvas, deciding how to portray himself. It’s really that process of thinking that struck me most—you can see Rembrandt considering how different expressions look, and also trying out different kinds of approaches to convey them, using lighter or darker shadows in prints and paintings, and thin or thick lines in his prints.
Degas does the same thing, but he also clearly thinks about the artists who came before him, and how they made portraits. If you were Degas in 1857 or so, looking into a mirror and then at a blank canvas or etching plate, wouldn’t you see not just your own features but also those of Rembrandt—and Ingres and Delacroix and Titian—and wouldn’t you have to decide whether to reject their examples or follow them a little bit—or a lot?
Degas’s etching of his friend and fellow printmaker Joseph-Gabriel Tourny is probably the best example of the French artist adopting some of Rembrandt’s ideas. 
Tourny wears a Rembrandtesque hat and sits at a window with a stack of paper, just as Rembrandt did in one of his self-portraits, and wears an ambiguous expression that many of the faces in the exhibition share, his head largely in shadows. And Degas printed this image over and over again in different ways, following a method for which Rembrandt had become famous. Even though we’re only showing one version of it, you can see evidence of Degas’s thought process in the two different framing lines that he drew around the central image.
When you see this image in the context of this exhibition, you can find a surprising number of ideas coming together in this one portrait, and maybe you can even feel a little bit closer to that small room with its fringed curtain and sturdy table, and to the artist Tourny is looking at…
Image Credits:
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669), Self-Portrait with Beret and Neck Cloth, 1633. Etching second state, 13.9 x 11.9 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-32
Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), The Engraver Joseph Tourny, 1857. Etching; sixth printing on Japanese vellum, 32.2 x 25.1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. H.O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H.O. Havemeyer, 1929, 29.107.55 [© The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY]
Posted in Rembrandt and Degas: Two Young Artists | Tagged curator, Degas, Rembrandt, Sarah Lees, the Clark | 1 Comment »
