Bellosguardo Foundation

The Bellosguardo Foundation is a

The great home sat furnished but unvisited by Huguette Clark and her mother after approximately 1951. The staff was under orders to keep the home as it was, and automobiles remained in the carriage house with 1949 license plates.[3]

The foundation hosted an inaugural fundraiser at the mansion on October 13, 2018, with more than 500 people paying $1,500 or more to attend.^[4][5]

Scheduled docent-led tours of the home began in 2023 for supporters, who may sign up on the foundation's website. The foundation is awaiting action by the city of Santa Barbara on an application to change the use of the property, to allow for a broader program of public tours.^[6][7][8][9]

Estate history

A sprawling estate on more than twenty-three acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Bellosguardo was the Clark summer home. It was named Bellosguardo, meaning "beautiful lookout" in Italian, by the previous owners, the William Miller Graham family.^[10] The Clark family bought the property and its Italianate mansion in 1923. Senator William Clark died in 1925. After the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake damaged the home, his widow, Anna Clark, Huguette's mother, had a new 22,000-square-foot mansion built in a French style, designed by Reginald Davis Johnson, completed in 1933.^[11][12] The property has 1,000 feet (304.8 m) of ocean frontage.^[13]

In 1928, Huguette Clark was married at the original Bellosguardo mansion in a private ceremony. Her husband, William Gower, was a Princeton graduate and the son of William Clark's top accountant. They were divorced in 1930.^[14]

Huguette also was instrumental in cleaning up the 42-acre saltwater marsh across East Cabrillo Boulevard from Bellosguardo, now a lake known as the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge. The refuge is named for Louise Amelia Andrée Clark, Huguette's older sister, who died of meningitis in 1919, a week before Andrée's 17th birthday. In 1928, Huguette donated $50,000 to the city of Santa Barbara to excavate a pond and create an artificial freshwater lake. She donated more funds in 1930 and 1989. Andrée is also remembered on the Bellosguardo property with a rustic thatched-roof cottage, built by the Grahams, that was renamed Andrée's Cottage.^[15]

Huguette inherited Bellosguardo from her mother in 1963, issuing two instructions to staff: keep everything in first-class condition, and make no changes.^[16]

Organization

Huguette Clark died in New York in 2011 at the age of 104, and in her will directed that the property be given to a new Bellosguardo Foundation for the fostering and promotion of the arts. The nonprofit foundation, which was formed after a contest over the will with the help of the New York Attorney General's Charitable Division Bureau, will work to determine the future of Bellosguardo.

It was 2018, seven years after Clark died, before her Bellosguardo property was transferred to the foundation, after settlement of the dispute over her will as well as negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service about gift taxes due.^[17]

In addition to the property and any furnishings and art in the home, Bellosguardo received Clark's extensive doll collection (valued at nearly $2 million).^[18] A public auction was held in January 2020 to sell the dolls for the benefit of the foundation, with a few dolls to remain on display at Bellosguardo.^[19]

Leadership

The legal settlement of the Clark estate called for one board member to come from the Clark relatives who challenged Huguette's will, and one from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, and one from her attorney in Santa Barbara, Jim Hurley. The rest of the trustees are nominated by the mayor of Santa Barbara. All are chosen by the New York attorney general.^[20] The family representative on the board is Ian Devine, a great-grandnephew of Huguette Clark.^[21]

The foundation's president is Jeremy Lindaman. Mr. Lindaman was a political consultant to former Santa Barbara mayor Helene Schneider, who nominated most of the original board of trustees. The trustees were chosen by the New York attorney general's office.^[22]

Trustees

As of June 2022,^[1][23] the trustees are:

• Dick Wolf, film and television producer, chair of the foundation
• Sandi Nicholson, community philanthropist, secretary of the foundation
• Stephen Clark, vice president and general counsel, J. Paul Getty Trust
• Josh Conviser, author/film producer
• Trust Company of the West
• Ian Devine, Clark family representative
• Jim Hurley, retired attorney for the late Huguette Clark
• Robert L. Lieff, of counsel/founder, Lieff Cabraser
• Charles Patrizia, Corcoran Gallery of Art representative
• Joan Rutkowski, retired opera singer/community philanthropist
• Gary Tobey, president, Haworth Marketing & Media Co.

References