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Waiting to pull off the Patriot's banner for the television cameras.
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Opening the doors.
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The crowd enters the main museum.
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'Puget Sound' is more than 4 by 7 feet.
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Rand explains aspects of the two paintings from the #MuseumBowl bet.
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Winslow Homer's 'Prout's Neck.'
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A detail from 'Puget Sound': fish can be seen in the baskets, boats faintly along the spit of land.
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'Prout's Neck' is all bold strokes of color.

Clark Art Unveils Super Bowl Prize

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
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Clark Art curator Richard Rand explains some of the details of 'Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast,' on display at the Clark through July 19 because of a Super Bowl bet.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Malcolm Butler's Super Bowl interception had the feeling of the fantastical so it's appropriate that the Clark Art Institute's winning payout would be just as dramatic.

"Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast," the prize of the #MuseumBowl between the Seattle Art Museum and the Clark was described Friday by Richard Rand, the institute's Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Senior Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, as "extremely theatrical and mostly imaginary."

In the spirit of cheerful cross-state posturing in such contests, the Clark had found a willing a partner in the Seattle museum for a gamble of fine art against the prowess of their regions' football teams.

SAM staked Albert Bierstadt's expansive and detailed "Puget Sound" on the Seattle Seahawks' taking the Super Bowl; the Clark, the smaller but no less dramatic and sweeping "West Point, Prout's Neck" by Winslow Homer, set on a turbulent Maine coast.

Needless to say, the Clark walked away the winner of the #MuseumBowl and on Friday unveiled the nearly 4 1/2 by 7 foot masterpiece with the swinging of the main museum's new entry doors.

"We decided we'd put up a great painting representative of our museum and our part of the country," Rand said, before taking down a Patriots flag on the glass doors that blocked the view of the painting. "Whoever was the Super Bowl winner would receive it with all the expenses paid by the museum or institution."

"Puget Sound" will stay at the Clark through July 19; on Monday, Patriots Day, football fans showing their affiliation for the Patriots (or even the Seahawks) will be admitted for free.

Bierstadt, a German native, wasn't a stranger to Massachusetts, having grown up in New Bedford. He joined a number of expeditions to the West Coast and was entranced with the majesty of its landscapes. Stylistically part of the Hudson River School movement, he used sketches and photographs he had made out West to paint large landscapes from his studio in New York.

"It really transformed his life and his art," said Rand of Bierstadt's first western journey in 1859. "He returned to New York and really began to develop a reputation as really the foremost painter of the American Western landscape."



His paintings are intricately detailed but not necessarily accurate. It was not so much the incredible landscape, Rand said, but "to introduce more or less accurate depictions of local inhabitants and customs."

"It's kind of a big Cecile B. DeMille cinematic performance," he said.

The painting was purchased by a New York collector with shipping interests in the Northwest and traveled to the West Coast.

On either side of the Bierstadt hang Homers, including "Prout's Neck" that the curators were already mentally packing up for a trip to Seattle before Russell Wilson's pass unexpectedly resulted in a Patriot's victory.

"It's smaller in scale but no less powerful in its way," Rand said. "You can see it's equally dramatic ... the rocky shore and this spectacular sunset, we felt it was in every way an equivalent painting to the Bierstadt."

Where the highly detailed "Puget Sound" was painted miles and years away from Bierstadt's western sojourn, "Prout's Neck" and "Eastern Point Prout's Neck" were created with broad strokes by Homer along the Maine coastline where he spent his final year.
    
The Clarks liked Homer and Frederic Remington's Westerns, but there is nothing quite like the Bierstadt in the permanent collection, Rand said.

"We really felt it was a great opportunity to attract a wide audience to the Clark who might not ordinarily come every day," he said. "This is a special outreach program. I'm sure there's a lot of connections we can make between fine art and football, I'm sure you agree."


Tags: Clark Art,   exhibit,   super bowl,   

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Mount Greylock School Committee Votes Slight Increase to Proposed Assessments

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Thursday voted unanimously to slightly increase the assessment to the district's member towns from the figures in the draft budget presented by the administration.
 
The School Committee opted to lower the use of Mount Greylock's reserve account by $70,000 and, instead, increase by that amount the share of the fiscal year 2025 operating budget shared proportionally by Lanesborough and Williamstown taxpayers.
 
The budget prepared by the administration and presented to the School Committee at its annual public hearing on Thursday included $665,000 from the district's Excess and Deficiency account, the equivalent of a municipal free cash balance, an accrual of lower-than-anticipated expenses and higher-than-anticipated revenue in any given year.
 
That represented a 90 percent jump from the $350,000 allocated from E&D for fiscal year 2024, which ends on June 30. And, coupled with more robust use of the district's tuition revenue account (7 percent more in FY25) and School Choice revenue (3 percent more), the draw down on E&D is seen as a stopgap measure to mitigate a spike in FY25 expenses and an unsustainable budgeting strategy long term, administrators say.
 
The budget passed by the School Committee on Thursday continues to rely more heavily on reserves than in years past, but to a lesser extent than originally proposed.
 
Specifically, the budget the panel approved includes a total assessment to Williamstown of $13,775,336 (including capital and operating costs) and a total assessment to Lanesborough of $6,425,373.
 
As a percentage increase from the FY24 assessments, that translates to a 3.90 percent increase to Williamstown and a 3.38 percent increase to Lanesborough.
 
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