Michael Conforti at the wet opening of the Clark Art Institute's addition on July 4, 2014.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — For two decades, Michael Conforti has been the face of the Clark Art Institute that he has radically helped change.

 

Although the most obvious manifestation of that change is the major expansion of the Clark's physical campus, Conforti hastens to emphasize that "a building is only a building."

 

The building project largely completed last summer was driven by and serves a programming expansion that began shortly after Conforti took over as the Clark's director in 1994.

 

And Conforti notes that neither the programming nor the new campus were created or implemented by him alone.

 

"I think the accomplishment is a combination of the programs as well as the building," Conforti said. "And it's an accomplishment of many people. You have to have a board of trustees that both gives you the authority and the general support to carry things out.

 

"Needless to say, an enormous number of donors who were unknown in the middle of the '90s who came forward to support the Clark for the building project and then to continue their support as we have done exhibitions and other things. For example, the Van Gogh show, we raised something close to a million dollars for the Van Gogh show, all from supporters of the Clark who never would have been here some time ago."

 

Others are willing to give Conforti credit.

 

"Driven by his creativity, determination, and energy, Michael has overseen a period of exceptional progress at the Clark," the Clark board's chairman and vice chairman, Andreas Halvorsen and Robert Scott, said in a joint statement when Conforti announced his retirement in March. "His commitment to the Clark's role in advancing and extending the public understanding of art has been inspirational. We are deeply grateful to Michael for his vision and extraordinary work."

 

Conforti steps aside on Aug. 31, retiring to his home in Williamstown and turning over the reins of the Clark to former Williams College President Francis Oakley, who will serve as interim director until the completion of a national search for Conforti's successor.

 

Earlier this summer, Conforti took a break to sit down and talk with iBerkshires.com about his time on South Street and his thoughts for the future.

 

Question: How has your summer been going? Busy as usual, I imagine.

 

Conforti: It's rather quiet at this moment. It has been packed. This is the quietest I've seen it at 10:30 in the morning.

 

It's been, actually, a very successful summer. It's been one that has exceeded our expectations. I'm very happy about that.

 

Q: I actually was asking about your summer, personally. A busy time for you, I suspect.

 

Conforti: I've only been here because a lot of people want to see the Clark while I'm the director. There are old friends and old colleagues who are passing through. My summer's been very much devoted to greeting people here, but it's been kind of fun because it's allowed me to show them the institute and all the success that is the new campus.

 

It's been a good summer in that sense.

 

Q: Why leave now? Why is this a good time to retire?

 

Conforti: Because I've done everything that I had ever wanted to do with the Clark.

 

I'm also not that young. I had expected to retire in 2011, when I was 66 or so. But we never finished the building at that time. So, it was really a decision that was focused on completing the building and my age and certainly looking forward to the ease of life that retirement provides for anybody.

 

I've been wanting to do it for a long time, and a year after the opening — we went through the opening and then the kinks, so to say. I think we're leaving it in a very good state for anyone else to take over and imagine it even more energetically and positively than we have in the past.

 

I'm very optimistic about the future.

 

Q: You just alluded to this, but I was going to ask: Why this year instead of last year after the opening? It would have been somewhat natural to retire at the end of the building process.

 

Conforti: I see this as the end of the building process. And, as you know, I could even stay a little longer for the Manton [Research Center] to open. The Manton is in very good shape. It's just taking a little longer.

 

There were things to address in the course of the last year which needed my oversight, in my opinion. You open a building but you still don't take over every part of it. There are parts of the building project we're still working on with the Turner Construction Co. My colleague, Tony King, is very capable in all of these areas, but I wanted to work with him for a while before he takes over the finishing of the building completely.

 

There are lots of reasons to wait beyond an opening date, and that was my plan.

 

Q: The expansion of the campus is what people are going to point to as your greatest accomplishment ...

 

Conforti: I don't think it's a particularly great accomplishment. It's simply a symbol of the programmatic growth the trustees and the staff and I have engaged in for the last 20 years.

 

A building is only a building. The building needs to embrace and address all the programmatic growth. And the programmatic growth is certainly as hard as the physical manifestation of those needs as expressed in a building project.

 

The growth of the exhibition program in the '90s and early 2000s, combined with the expansion of the research and academic program, all of that, in a sense, required a campus that would be as accommodating to programs and as glorious aesthetically as the one we currently have.

 

But it's not a building in and of itself. There would have been no reason for building expansion based on the program we had in the middle of the 1990s.

 

Q: Was the programmatic expansion and the physical expansion that came with it your charge when the board of trustees brought you in?

 

Conforti: There was an assumption that we should do something with the depth and quality of the library resources. And there was a charge to look at the research and academic program as it was then and think about how the resources were utilized more successfully. I think that was the charge.

 

There were no more specific charges.

 

I had the great good fortune of coming in 1994 at a time when they were already approaching a small-scale building project that was to only address library issues.

 

With my suggestions and with a programmatic ambition in mind, the board agreed to expand that small expansion to include an enclosure of the courtyard of what is now the Manton Research Center for a modest expansion of temporary exhibition space as well as a permanent cafe space that could function to address the needs of visitors in the summer time.

 

That opened in 1996. If that hadn't happened, we couldn't have organized the exhibitions we did from the late '90s to the early 2000s that were so successful they required even larger space afterward.

 

They began with an exhibition on our own collection of Renoir in 1996. And then it went on to a fantastic John Singer Sargent show in 1997 and then proceeded to various other summer shows, including a big impressionist show in 2001.

 

I think people remember them now, and they certainly established the Clark as a summer venue for special exhibitions in a way it hadn't been before.

 

But it would not have been possible without the modest expansion of those facilities that were allowed because the board was willing to change its direction once I was appointed and expand that current building project.

 

So buildings relate to program expansion. In that case, it was a building expansion that was already happening with a program ambition that generated added space. In this case, it was programming that already existed that needed extra space.

 

Buildings are not just about buildings.

 

Q: Present company accepted, what summer exhibitions stand out in your mind?

 

Conforti: One of my favorite shows was that show in 1997 of the young John Singer Sargent. It was a show we did with Marc Simpson, who was working at the Clark at that moment, and he's been a consulting curator for us on shows ever since. He did a marvelous show in a very short period of time. There were no exhibitions planned when I arrived.

 

When you think about the shows that followed in relatively rapid succession: One on Millet for which there was a huge coverage in The New York Times. I think that was the first time we had that level of attention nationally, which has become a regular thing to expect in the summer time.

 

A great exhibition called 'Painting Quickly in France' in 2001, a great Impressionist show.

 

But there are many shows. What I'm proud of is the variety of exhibitions we've done as well as re-addressing our role in contemporary art. We've done that a little more recently, being inspired by the building at Stone Hill. We've gone back to what the Clark was doing in the 1960s and '70s and actually showing contemporary artists. That's manifested this particular year in the piece of architecture/sculpture on Stone Hill that's called 'Crystal,' which has become part of people's lives in a very interesting way. People are now using it as they embrace the extraordinary views you get at the top of Stone Hill. I'm told people have yoga in the morning. There have been a lot of evening time drinks, parties informally done. People are making it part of their lives, which excites me.

 

Q: What's next for you at this point?

 

Conforti: What I say is retirement. It's great.

 

Q: Scholarship?

 

Conforti: Many things. Time will tell. I have a number of boards that I'm on. There are a number of academic projects that I'm readdressing. There are a lot of things in what people call the 'bucket list' of things that I haven't been able to do, which I'm going to be doing.

 

I'm looking forward to that time, and as the time is getting closer I'm even more excited.

 

Q: You mentioned the 'bucket list' and things you may be doing in your next act. Leaving the Manton Center aside, are there any other loose ends here that come to mind?

 

Conforti: Not so much loose ends. The board has asked me to come up with a list of things I would suggest need to be considered at the Clark in the future. I think that's helpful for the next generation. It's not a guide. It's just where you left off.

 

There are a couple of elements within the building project we're listing. We're listing ways we have managed in the past. All of these things will be helpful for the next director — less to tell them what to do than to tell them where we've been so it's easier to get a sense of what the norms are around here and what the former ambitions have been.

 

That's all background material. I know I'd like to have it if I was to be a new director.

 

And then he or she will integrate that with their own vision. And that vision will be both their personal perspective combined with the perspective of staff and trustees. They'll form a direction. I'm sure there will be a strategic planning session in the next year or two when the new director comes and a foundation for what the Clark will be over the next decade.

 

That's the excitement of the Clark in the future. But I'm excited to say the really hard work of getting the building done is behind us so they can have the excitement — in a sense the excitement I had when that modest expansion was done in 1996 -- to think about programmatic expansion and change and direction that might not have been considered in the past.

 

That's where there are extraordinary possibilities and I have confidence and hopes that, as I've said publicly, the best is yet to come. We've tended the garden in a sense, and one can expand far beyond it.

 

Q: So you have no specific regrets or things you might have wanted to do?

 

Conforti: Actually, I don't have any. It doesn't mean it's an easy road. The roads are always curvy and there have been curvy roads to getting the Clark to where it is now, but there will always be curvy roads and there will always be blockades. We had external and internal issues over the course of the 20 years I've been here. But in terms of regret and overall direction or disappointment in achievement, no, there haven't been any.

 

And I've been fortunate. It's not because I've done a great job. It's because we've had a very good support system here. Whenever I've had an idea of what can happen, we've strategized it internally, we've had the support externally and ultimately it could happen.

 

I think people feel that about us in the community. I don't hear a lot of complaints about the Clark.

 

Does that make sense?

 

Q: Yes, it does. But I thought there might be things that you thought of, say, five years ago that you just didn't have time to get done.

 

Conforti: If they exist, they exist in the external sphere. We all want the Berkshires to be a more exciting place for newcomers. We want more permanent residents. And the Clark has done a lot to encourage that effort — now working closely with 1Berkshire.

 

We've done as much as we can. I haven't been satisfied with the results yet, but we're on a very good path — both in the work with the county and the work with Williamstown as we grow with the college and the town fathers the infrastructure of Williamstown. That is definitely uncompleted work. But I think we're on a good path.

 

I think there are places we can and should be internationally, particularly in the effects of our research and academic program as well as partnering with institutions of our type and scale around the world. I think there will be a lot of possibilities there as time goes on. And as the reputation of the Clark becomes even greater as the years go on, one will look forward to seeing those partnerships and programmatic engagements enhanced over time.

 

We probably did as much as we could in our time, but I think there's more that has potential, that can and should be done.

At the opening of Stone Hill in 2008.