The Clark Art Institute

Sterling Clark came from serious money. His grandfather Edward Clark had been Isaac Singer's business partner and lawyer, and the sewing machine fortune that followed set the family up for generations. Sterling served in the Army, then settled in Paris around 1910 and began to collect, and after he married Francine Clary in 1919 the two bought together as a team. They trusted their own taste over the fashions of the day, and that independence is exactly what makes the collection feel personal rather than assembled by committee.

What they gathered leans toward the pleasures of nineteenth-century French painting, with Renoir as the clear favorite, but it reaches much wider: John Singer Sargent, George Inness, Rodin sculpture, early Italian and Netherlandish panels, and a deep trove of silver, porcelain, prints, and drawings. Because it all came from two people following one shared vision, walking the galleries feels like being let into someone's home rather than touring a warehouse of masterpieces.

The original 1955 building is a dignified white marble box, but the Clark's second act came in 2014, when the Japanese architect Tadao Ando reshaped the campus. His Clark Center, low and quiet in concrete and glass, is fronted by a three-tiered reflecting pool that steps down toward the hills and doubles as part of a water system that recycles hundreds of thousands of gallons a year. It is the kind of building that makes people stop on the path just to look at the water and the mountains behind it.

The grounds are the other half of the Clark, and they are free to everyone. One hundred forty acres of meadow and woods roll back from the museum, with trails climbing Stone Hill to a small study and conservation building Ando also designed and to long views over the valley. In winter the museum even lends snowshoes so visitors can keep walking the trails through the snow. Few art museums invite you to spend the afternoon outdoors afterward; the Clark practically insists on it.

The Clark anchors a tight, unlikely cluster of world-class art and mountain scenery. A mile east in downtown Williamstown is the Williams College Museum of Art, free and strong in American and modern work. Six miles the other way, in old-mill North Adams, MASS MoCA fills a sprawling nineteenth-century factory with some of the largest contemporary-art installations in the country. It is genuinely possible to see three excellent museums in a single day here.

And then there is the country itself. Mount Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts, rises just south with its summit tower and trails, and the historic Mohawk Trail, one of America's oldest scenic byways, winds east through the hills in a blaze of color come autumn. The Clark gives you the art; the northern Berkshires give you the drive and the walk to go with it.

The Clark sits just south of the center of Williamstown, an easy few minutes from downtown and about ten minutes from North Adams. It is well off the interstate, out in the corner where Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York come together, so it works best as a planned destination rather than a quick highway stop.

Time your visit for the winter months if you can, when gallery admission is free for everyone, and remember that kids, students, and members get in free year round. Whatever the season, leave time to walk. The trails and grounds stay open even when the galleries are not, so a stroll up Stone Hill with the Berkshires spread out below is always part of a Clark day, art or no art.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.