CROSSROADS MUSEUM: CLARK ART INSTITUTE

IN Williamstown, Mass. next week, one of the newest U.S. art museums will celebrate its first anniversary by opening its handsome new central court, one of the most ingenious exhibition rooms ever devised. To keep the light at ideal brilliance, the 76-ft.-by-54-ft. skylight ceiling has a photoelectric device which automatically adjusts louvers if the sun is too bright, turns on cold cathode light tubes as sunlight fades.

Such luxury and attention to detail reflect the taste of the museum's founders, Singer Sewing Machine Heir Robert Sterling Clark, 79, and his French-born wife Francine. Seven years ago the publicity-shy Clarks, best known for the success of their racing silks (including wins in both Britain's Derby and St. Leger with Never Say Die in 1954), started casting about for a place to house their huge art collection. They settled on a 90-acre hilltop lot in the quiet college community of Williamstown, because a) it was far removed from urban centers which might be atomic-bomb targets, and b) they were convinced that a crossroads museum might entice summer motorists who would never go near a big city art show.

In building their $3,000,000 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, the Clarks ignored cost (local boosters boast that the marble for the new museum was the biggest single order in Vermont since the U.S. Supreme Court), but insisted on quality. In 45 years of collecting, the Clarks have ranged widely, from Botticelli and Piero della Francesca to Puvis de Chavannes. The museum still has 30-odd Renoirs tucked in the basement, one soon-to-be-opened gallery hung with Italian primitives. The rest of the Clarks' collection, housed in residences both in the U.S. and abroad, is so large and dispersed that Museum Director Peter Guille has yet to catalogue it. But in paintings already shown, the Clarks have included such Old World masters as Van Dyck, Frans Hals, Degas and Goya, plus outstanding works by two of the most popular U.S. painters (opposite).

Winslow Homer's A Summer Squall, painted on the coast of Maine, catches the sudden gusts of raw wind, turning the sea into a churning cauldron of menacing green and white caps. Frederic Sackrider Remington's The Scout is the epitome of high adventure in the old Wild West, breathing romance that decades of western movie thrillers have failed to dull. Both paintings are just the thing to make any passing motorist feel that the stop was highly worth while.

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