Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum
The Smith Institute first opened to the public on 11 August 1874. It was an occasion for great celebration in Stirling, and the shops in the town closed at 12 noon to allow people to attend the opening. Nevertheless, there were some mixed feelings, for Thomas Stuart Smith, had died in 1869 and the location of the building was felt by many people to be too far away from the old town.
Stephen Carlton Clark
Clark's brothers Sterling and Ambrose also were art collectors—Sterling owned 39 Renoirs and founded the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts; "Brose" collected equestrian art—but the family feud ended the possibility of consolidating all three collections in a single museum at Cooperstown. In 2006, the Clark Art Institute mounted an exhibition that provided a glimpse of what might have been. "The Clark Brothers Collect: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings" featured masterpieces from Sterling's collection hanging alongside masterpieces once owned by Stephen C. Clark. The exhibition traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007.