Festival Opening
Thursday, October 23, 2008

7:30 pm

McManus Room

Westport Public Library

H. Nichols B. Clark
Founding Director of the
Eric Carle Museum

H. Nichols B. Clark, founding director of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Ma, opens this year's festival with an illuminating look at the connections between museum art and picture book illustration. His stated mission is to make people realize that you "cannot flunk museum going."

When his daughter Allegra was 18 months old H. Nichols B. Clark, a self avowed frustrated actor, read Caps for Sale to her in animated voice full of verve and gusto. Allegra and her father fell in love with Esphyr Slobodkina’s humorous tale, as well as her whimsical illustrations. Clark, who received his B.A. at Harvard and his Ph. D. in American Art from the University of Delaware, read many children’s picture books aloud to his daughter, his awareness and appreciation for the skilled design and extraordinary imaginative qualities of the books’ illustrations growing with each storytelling.

His wife, Trinkett Clark, an Art History major at Connecticut College who later became a curator of Twentieth Century Art at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia, once asked one of her college professors if she could do a project on children’s book illustration. As a homesick undergraduate Ms. Clark had often found solace rereading her favorite children’s books. Her professor informed her that children’s book illustration was not art. His response appalled her. She was to remember the incident and share it with her husband. It comes as no surprise, that years later, Nick and Trinkett Clark, along with Michael Patrick Hearn, organized the first comprehensive exhibit to survey children’s book illustration held at the Chrysler Museum of Art and co-authored Myth, Magic, and Mystery: One Hundred Years of American Children’s Book Illustration.

Clark, who has held curatorial and educational positions at several museums and galleries including the Chrysler Museum of Art and the National Gallery in Washington DC, began his career with young people teaching Art History at Phillips Exeter Academy. There, he realized that "many very bright students were very comfortable talking about written texts but totally insecure with visual texts." It became his mission to make people realize they "cannot flunk museum going," a mission he continues as founding director of the Eric Carle Museum, a museum dedicated to the art of children’s book illustration.

"...through these early books a young child is given a wealth of visual imagery and an invitation to dream. Under their spell, a child is granted spiritual and intellectual freedom while establishing a foundation for his or her future. In today's society, these roots extend around the world. Although the fast-paced technological community in which we live is providing tough competition for literature of all kinds, without early exposure to books, young people will lack the fundamentals necessary to take part in cybernetic advances."

... from Myth, Magic, and Mystery: One Hundred Years of American Children's Book Illustration

last updated: 7/31/08