One Step Remains!

Help us close a $10,000 gap by June 30 in DCHS’s Featuring Miss Clowes Fund! Important financial support from the Members Fund of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, in addition to site and logistical support from Locust Grove, leaves us with a relatively small gap for such a significant exhibition. The exhibition will live on in a permanent, evolving, online form on the DCHS website. 

After years of work involving research, conservation and collaboration, we only need to close the remaining $10,000 target to ensure that the November/December exhibition of the work, life and legacy of Caroline Morgan Clowes lives up to kind of exhibition this extraordinary woman deserves.

“They Suppose You Are a Gentleman:” Caroline Clowes’ Extraordinary Path to National Artistic Acclaim opens in November at Locust Grove Estate, Poughkeepsie. Her work is a beautiful and amazing part of the story, best appreciated in person. But the story of her ambition, strategies, and occasional legerdemain to be an artistic and commercial artistic success in a male dominated field is equally compelling.

There could be no better or fitting site for the exhibition that Locust Grove, who are generously providing significant space and access for a full exhibition, and offering logistical and other essential support.

Set on a hill overlooking the scenic Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, the not-for-profit Locust Grove Estate includes a historic Italianate mansion open for tours, 200 acres of landscaped grounds with five miles of hiking trails, and a visitor welcome center with art galleries, museum shop, and classrooms for educational programs. This year alone, Locust Grove will be the scene of hands-on gardening events like “Garden Gathering Peonies,” guided walks through the gardens and carriage roads, events that combine wine, food sunset events, a children’s event called, Fairy House Hunt, the renowned antique car show, an artisan marketplace, and mansion tours, for starters.

There could be no better setting for the story of a local woman’s challenging, but hugely successful pursuit of artistic dreams.

Just to recap: in 2019, the very successful Saving Miss Clowes Fund, generated funds for the professional, archival restoration of 19 paintings, and nearly 30 drawings of Caroline Morgan Clowes. We are grateful to those who stepped forward to ensure her work is physically preserved.

Delayed by the pandemic, we are delighted to be nearing the opportunity in November for the public to be able to literally see what the head of Vassar College’s Art Department was referring to at the time he acquired one of her paintings for the emerging Vassar College Museum. Henry Van Ingen applauded her talent for creating “transparent, solid flesh tints;” an apparent contradiction but an effort to describe the wonderful luminosity and real “feel” of the horses, cows, sheep, chickens, and other animals, she depicted in her landscapes.

The central sponsor of this event is the Members’ Fund of Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College and the Dutchess County Historical Society have formalized a partnership around their shared goals of community engagement and education through the visual arts, with a view to offering more inclusive and insightful historical narratives as context. 

The first collaboration is this November and December 2022 exhibition.

Important financial support comes from the Members’ Fund of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. Other support comes in the form of the involvement of students, graduates and Ph.D. candidates. There will be an expansion of both short and long-term loans of DCHS Collections for exhibition at the Loeb. Bart Thurber, Director and Lecturer in Art at the Center said, the goal of the partnership is “to shine a light on the long overlooked histories in the region.”  Bill Jeffway, Executive Director of DCHS said, “the two organizations have the perfect balance of shared goals and complimentary skills and resources; together we will have a much greater impact than we could individually.”

We have a goal of raising the remaining $10,000 in the Featuring Miss Clowes Fund by June 30th. You can help ensure Clowes’ work and legacy is seen and appreciated.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the foundational support of those who gave to DCHS’s 2019 Saving Miss Clowes Fund, thank you!