Stephen Carlton Clark

Stephen Carlton Clark (August 29, 1882 – September 17, 1960) was an American art collector, businessman, newspaper publisher and philanthropist. He may be best known as the founder of the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York.

Biography Stephen C. Clark was the youngest of the four sons of Alfred Corning Clark and Elizabeth (née Scriven) Clark. His grandfather, Edward Cabot Clark, had been Isaac Singer's lawyer and partner in the Singer Sewing Machine Company. His father inherited a 37.5% stake in the company, and invested the profits in New York City real estate. Alfred died in April 1896, leaving a $30,000,000 family trust to his widow and sons.

Clark was educated at Phillips Academy (Andover), Yale University (B.A. 1903) and Columbia Law School (1907).

Following his graduation from law school, Clark became a director of the Singer Manufacturing Company. He and his brother Edward built the Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown in 1909. That same year, he was elected to the New York State Assembly as a Republican from Otsego County (133rd New York State Legislature). In the 1920s, he was the owner and publisher of three Albany, New York newspapers, including the Albany Evening Journal (purchased from William Barnes Jr.). The estate's mansion houses the Fenimore Art Museum, whose collection of American paintings and folk art Clark greatly expanded in the 1940s and 1950s. The hospital housed wounded World War I veterans for several years, before opening to the public on June 1, 1922. The largest cash bequest made by Stephen C. Clark in his will was to Bassett Hospital: $6,000,000. He was a founding trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in 1929, and served as chairman of its board of trustees from 1939 to 1946. He also served on the board of Roosevelt Hospital, and on numerous corporate boards.

Personal life Clark was age 13 when his father died. Following six years as a widow, his mother married Bishop Henry Codman Potter (1834–1908), of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, on October 4, 1902.

On February 20, 1909, Clark married Susan Vanderpoel Hun (1889–1967), the daughter of an Albany lawyer and a family friend since childhood. Clark and his bride were honeymooning in Europe when his mother died on March 4, 1909.

Stephen and Susan Clark were the parents of five children: Elizabeth Clark Labouisse (1909–1945) Stephen Carlton Clark Jr. (1911–1992) Peter Gansevoort Clark (1915–1915), died in infancy. Alfred Corning Clark II (1916–1961) Robert Vanderpoel Clark (1917–1952).

Clark hired architect Frederick Sterner to design a 5-story Jacobean Revival city house at 46 East 70th Street, Manhattan. The residence was completed in 1912, and was used by Clark and his family until his death in 1960. It has housed The Explorers Club since 1964.

In 1923, Clark and his brother Sterling entered into a famous feud that lasted until their deaths. The terms of their family trust limited its beneficiaries to the four brothers and their natural issue. Sterling had married French actress Francine Clark in 1919, becoming step-father to her daughter Viviane. He sought approval from his brothers to change the terms of the family trust to make Viviane a beneficiary. Stephen, the only one of the brothers who had fathered children, refused to approve the change. In response, Sterling withdrew his quarter of the trust's assets, sold his properties in Cooperstown, and never spoke to Stephen again.

Stephen C. Clark died on September 17, 1960, in New York City. a vast athletic facility that is also used by the Baseball Hall of Fame for its annual induction ceremonies. In New York City, the foundation supports education, community organizations and cultural institutions. As of 2013, The Clark Foundation's assets were in excess of $600,000,000.

Yale University awarded Clark an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in 1957.

Clark served as chairman of the board of directors of the Baseball Hall of Fame, as did his son Stephen C. Clark Jr. Jane Forbes Clark II, daughter of Stephen C. Clark Jr. and Jane Forbes (née Wilbur) Clark, has served on the board since 1992, and been its chairman since 2000.

Art collection Stephen C. Clark was an avid art collector, with voluminous holdings ranging from Old Masters, French Impressionists and Early Modernists to American colonial portraits, Hudson River School works, American genre paintings and American folk art. As a young man, he helped to organize the 1913 Armory Show, and purchased the most expensive sculpture in the exhibition: Wilhelm Lehmbruck's Standing Woman (later donated by Clark to MoMA). He acquired 13 works by Matisse by the early 1930s, which he exhibited in the "Matisse Room" of his city house. He sold or gave away the Matisses prior to his death. Stephen C. Clark assembled a choice collection of works by American painter Thomas Eakins, some purchased from the artist's widow, which he bequeathed to the Yale University Art Gallery, the Addison Gallery of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The 40 paintings he left to Yale also included works by Frans Hals, Van Gogh, Manet, Winslow Homer and George Wesley Bellows. His bequests to the Metropolitan Museum of Art included paintings by Renoir, Degas, Seurat and Cezanne, The exhibition traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007.

Lawsuits In May, 2009, a lawsuit was filed against Yale University regarding Vincent van Gogh's The Night Café (1888). Pierre Konowaloff, heir to the estate of his great-grandfather Ivan Morozov, alleged in the suit that the painting had been illegally taken by the Soviet government in 1920. Clark acquired it in 1933, and bequeathed it to Yale in 1960. Konowaloff's suit argued that Yale should have questioned the propriety of Clark's purchase (76 years earlier), and that the court could not deem the university to be the painting's rightful owner. "Stephen C. Clark either had actual knowledge, or reasonably should have known, that Russia had no legal title to the painting when he sought to acquire it in 1933."

Konowaloff filed a similar lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art, seeking the return of Paul Cézanne's 1891 portrait of his wife—which had been a 1960 bequest by Clark. In September, 2011 the U.S. District Court in Manhattan granted the Met's motion to dismiss the suit: "The Court found that Mr. Konowaloff’s claim would require it to question the validity of the Soviet Union’s taking Cézanne’s portrait of his wife as part of its nationalization of private property after the Russian Revolution, which the Court, under longstanding precedent of the 'act of state' doctrine, refused to do. Under that doctrine, the acts of a sovereign government are legitimate, official acts."