Customer Reviews

The Clarks of Cooperstown: Their Singer Sewing Machine Fortune, Their Great and Influential Art Collections, Their Forty-Year Feud

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3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Debby Applegate in the May 20, 2007 NY Times describes this as a "flawed family biography" although she admits it is "fascinating." It is indeed a fascinating family saga which resulted in great legacies to the National Gallery in Washington, DC; the Clark museum in Williamstown, MA; the Modern and Metropolitan museums in NYC; and several cultural institutions in Cooperstown, NY; not to mention the "Dakota" apartment building in NYC. Don't be misled by Ms. Applegate's smart alecky review.

I read biographies all the time and this one had the potential to be superb: Singer Company fortune, amazing art collections, fascist plot against FDR (yes!), surprising sexual liaisons, family feuds of a rarified nature. However, it feels tedious to wade through, because the author is not a gifted writer, gushes too much when he should be more objective, and spends far too much time rhapsodizing over individual works of art to the point where we lose sight of the people collecting them. An editor could have pruned what feels like endless repetitions of Sterling's shopping trips and pushed the author to analyze, not emote. I understand from a New York Times article (not the review mentioned by the other reviewer) that the book was rushed. It certainly feels like it missed a stage in the editorial process.

It would be facile to describe Alfred, Sterling, or Stephen Clark just as "wealthy deadbeats". Look at all they accomplished! Directly or indirectly, members of this family are responsible for establishing three art museums (The Clark in Williamstown, MA; The Museum of Modern Art in NYC, and The Cloisters), as well as contributing valuable donations of art to so many others; establishing the Baseball Hall of Fame; building the historic Dakota apartment building in NYC, a hospital in Cooperstown, and so much more.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I appreciated Mr. Weber's thoughtful and detailed descriptions of the important works of art acquired by Sterling and Stephen Clark, particularly Van Gogh's 'The Night Cafe', and Seurat's 'Circus Sideshow', and what these paintings meant to the men who bought them.

This is a consistently interesting book about a unique American family, with a fascinating cast of characters. The author's presentation of the lives of Alfred, Sterling, and Stephen Clark certainly didn't feel rushed to me, not at all. This is a well-researched, detailed book and Mr. Weber has a very engaging, almost personal way of telling it; his style is similar to great conversation.

I recommend this biography, and also, as a companion piece to it, "The Clark Brothers Collect: Early Modern and Impressionist Paintings", the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit catalog of works of art that were once owned by Sterling R. and Stephen C. Clark. Seeing the works of art they collected, and what they gave or bequeathed to American museums, the reader will appreciate their generosity all the more.

Having attended school in Cooperstown in the Otesaga Hotel, I found the book fascinating as I had not known of the Clarks as other than the rich family in town. Seldom there but respected by the townsfolk.
The book was well written and, while not, a bestseller it gives a vivid portait of art collecting in this country.
A good read.

An interesting topic but flawed book. It is mainly a history of how a family fortune was created (on the sewing machine invention of the wild Isaac Singer and the business shrewdness of Edward Clark) and then spent on art by generations of certain of the Clark family's men.

The author is prone to exaggeration. The art purchased always seems to take great "bravery" to buy. "Why Stephen Carleton Clark fired Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. is one of the most important questions of twentieth-century American cultural history." Really?

Odd things are included, such as paragraphs spent on a cheap, obscure novel apparently about the Clarks, when almost nothing is said of one of the Clarks founding baseball's hall of fame. Much is made of an alleged plot by a Clark to overthrow the U.S. administration of FDR with little real evidence given to show any serious action by that Clark in furtherance of the "plot."

After reading the book, I fail to have the same high enthusiasm and respect for this family of wealthy deadbeats as does the author.

Enjoyed the book, it was educational for me, I am fan of biographys and history books and I was happy to have read it.