The Tavitian donation at the Clark Art Institute (1)

1/11/24 - Acquisitions - Williamstown, Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute - The Clark Art Institute, directed by French curator Olivier Meslay, has just announced an exceptional gift of 331 works of art, together with a donation of 45 million dollars to create a curatorial post in charge of the collection and to build a new wing for the museum.
The donation comes from the foundation of Aso Tavitian, a businessman born in Bulgaria in 1940 to Armenian parents who survived the genocide of 1915. A philanthropist and collector, he left a very large collection when he died in 2020. In 2023, the foundation gave the Metropolitan Museum a portrait of Giovanni Battista Moroni (see the news item of 28/1/23), and a portrait of Francesco Salviati (see the news item of 9/2/23). A member of the Clark’s board of trustees from 2006 to 2012, he had remained closely associated with the museum, and it was to it that part of his collection was donated. Another part of his collection will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York on 7 February.

1. Giovanni di Paolo (c. 1399-c. 1482)
Madonna and Child Enthroned, vers 1445-1450
Oil on panel - 37.5 x 26.7 cm
Williamstown, Clark Art Institute
Photo: Public domain

See the image in its page

2. Jan van Eyck (c. 1390-1441) and workshop
Madonna of the Fountain, c. 1440
Oil on panel - 21.3 x 17.2 cm
Williamstown, Clark Art Institute
Photo: Clark Art Institute

See the image in its page

The 331 works include 132 paintings, 130 sculptures, 39 drawings and 30 objets d’art. We will be devoting a series of articles to the collection, without being able to be exhaustive about its contents, especially as the Clark does not yet have quality photographs of all the works. Eventually, however, we will include them all in our acquisitions database. We can, however, describe the collection in broad terms and reproduce several of them.

3. Hans Memling (c. 1435-1494)
Portrait of a Man, c. 1470-1475