(June 9, 1906 – May 24, 2011)
Early life
Huguette Marcelle Clark was born in 1906 in Paris, France, the second daughter of William A. Clark with his second wife, Anna Eugenia (née La Chapelle) (1878—1963).[3] She had an elder sister, Andrée Clark, and several half siblings from her father's first marriage: William Andrews Clark, Jr., Charles W. Clark, Katherine Clark Morris and Mary J. Clark. Following the death of her father in 1925, she and her mother moved from a mansion at 962 Fifth Avenue to a 12th floor apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue. She later purchased the entire 8th floor in the building. In 1928, she agreed to donate $50,000 (equivalent to $641,131 in 2010 dollars[4]) to excavate the salt pond and create an artificial freshwater lake across from Bellosguardo ( 34.418376°N 119.660664°W), her 23-acre (93,000 m2) estate on the Pacific Coast in Santa Barbara, California. She stipulated that the facility would be named the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge after her deceased sister.In 1928, she married Princeton graduate and then-law student William MacDonald Gower but they divorced in 1930.[5] The daughter of a former staff member described Clark and her mother as not "odd or strange" but rather "quiet, loving, giving ladies". Over the years she developed a distrust of outsiders, including her family, because she thought they were after her money. She preferred to conduct all of her conversations in French so that others were unlikely to understand the discussion.[6]
Huguette Clark was a musician and an artist who, in 1929, exhibited seven of her paintings at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The last known photograph of her was taken in 1930 and she was rarely seen in public following the death of her mother in 1963. She reportedly had a very small group of friends.[7] Her closest friend and former employee, Suzanne Pierre, died of Alzheimer's in February 2011.[2][8]
Later years and controversy
In February 2010, Clark became the subject of a series of reports on msnbc.com, which said caretakers at her three residences had not seen her in decades, and that her palatial estates in Santa Barbara, California, and New Canaan, Connecticut, had lain empty throughout that time, although the houses and their extensive grounds were meticulously maintained by their staff.[9] Msnbc.com investigative reporter Bill Dedman later determined that she was in the care of a New York City hospital, and that some of her personal possessions had been quietly sold. Possessions sold included a rare 1709 violin called La Pucelle (or The Virgin) made by Antonio Stradivari and an 1882 Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting entitled In the Roses.[7] Building staff reported that she was frail but not ill when Clark left her Fifth Avenue co-op in an ambulance in 1988. Initially she took up residence at Mount Sinai Medical Center to be more comfortable but was later transferred to another hospital in Manhattan.[10]In August 2010, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office initiated a probe into her affairs managed by her accountant, Irving Kamsler, and her attorney, Wallace Bock.[11] Then a former paralegal for Wallace Bock's law firm, Cynthia Garcia, said that Bock received many lavish gifts from Huguette, including a $1.5 million gift after 9/11 to build a bomb shelter in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank near the homes of his daughters.[12] According to Garcia, Bock tried many times to get Clark to sign a will, including versions that included him as a beneficiary. Bock's spokesperson acknowledged that she had a will.[13]
In September 2010, in a one-paragraph ruling, Judge Laura Visitacion-Lewis turned down a request from a grand-half-nephew and two grand-half-nieces, Ian Devine, Carla Hall Friedman and Karine McCall, to appoint an independent guardian to manage Clark's affairs.[14] The Manhattan District Attorney interviewed her twice and found she did not have all her faculties, and both her vision and hearing were, unsurprisingly, poor.[15]
Death and interment
Clark died at Beth Israel Medical Center on the morning of May 24, 2011, two weeks short of her 105th birthday. She had been moved a month earlier to an intensive-care unit and later to a room with hospice care. She had been living at Beth Israel under pseudonyms; the latest was Harriet Chase. The room was guarded and she was cared for by full-time private nurses. Her room on the 3rd floor had a card with the fake room number "1B" with the name "Chase" taped over the actual room number. A criminal investigation into the handling of her money was ongoing at the time of her death.[2][16]She was interred on the morning of May 26, 2011, in the family mausoleum in section 85 of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx before the cemetery gates were open to the public. Her attorney said she had specific instructions that no funeral service or mass be held. In 2008, Clark's representatives obtained consent from other Clark family members to alter the mausoleum originally commissioned by her father. It was not until early 2011 that the mausoleum was altered to accommodate her entombment.[17]
Clark's will was filed on June 22, 2011 in Surrogate's Court. The last will and testament was made in 2005 and left 75% of her estate, about $300 million, to charity. Her longtime nurse, Hadassah Peri, received about $30 million, her goddaughter, Wanda Styka, received about $12 million and the newly created Bellosguardo Foundation $8 million. Other employees who managed her residences received smaller sums. Her attorney and accountant each received $500,000. One of Claude Monet's 250 oil paintings inspired by Water Lilies (Nymphéas) in his Giverny flower garden was bequeathed to the Corcoran Museum of Art.[18] She purchased the 1907 painting from Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1930.[19][20]
