August 4, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—A recent cover story in American Art Review (June 2004) featured the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.

Trinkett Clark, the curator of American art at the Mead, wrote, “With both the permanent collection and a vibrant exhibition program, the Mead Art Museum actively implements the motto of Amherst College, Terras irradient, by enlightening both the students and other visitors with an inspiring feast of visual treasures.”

Clark tells the story of the Mead Art Museum as a part of the history of the college. Fully renovated in 2001, the museum (www.amherst.edu/~mead/), houses nearly 14,000 works that Amherst College has acquired since 1839. “Most of this [collection] came to the museum through the largesse of many alumni and friends,” Clark writes. The building itself, designed by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White, is named for its benefactor, William Rutherford Mead, Class of 1867.

Clark writes, “The Mead is most noted for its splendid collection of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American paintings, particularly portraits and landscapes.” The American Art Review article is illustrated with full-color reproductions of Colonial and Federal portraits by John Singleton Copley and the Peale family, landscapes by Thomas Cole, and figural subjects by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and William Merritt Chase. Impressionist paintings by Robert Henri and Childe Hassam reflect contemporary European art styles.

Clark, who has been at the Mead since 2001, has an M.A. degree from The George Washington University and a B.A. from Connecticut College, both in the history of art.

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