Adele Goodman Clark

{{Redirect|Adele Clark|the singer|The Adele Clark Show|the sociologist|Adele Clarke}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Adele Goodman Clark

| image = Adèle Clark, 1915 (cropped).jpg

| caption = Clark in 1915

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{birth date|1882|9|27}}

| birth_place = Montgomery, Alabama, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|1983|6|4|1882|9|27}}

| death_place = Richmond, Virginia, U.S.

| occupation = Artist, activist

| education = Virginia Randolph Ellett School

| alma_mater = New York School of Art

| partner = Nora Houston

| parents = Robert and Estelle (née Goodman) Clark

}}

Adele Goodman Clark (September 27, 1882 – June 4, 1983) was an American artist and suffragist.

Early life

Clark was born in 1882 in Montgomery, Alabama to Robert Clark, a railroad worker originally from Belfast, and Estelle Goodman Clark, a Jewish music teacher originally from New Orleans. She was the sister of fellow suffragist Edith Clark Cowles.{{cite book |last1=Batson |first1=Brent Tarter, Marianne E. Julienne & Barbara C. |title=Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia, The |date=2020 |publisher=Arcadia Publishing |isbn=978-1-4671-4419-3 |page=33 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O8HDDwAAQBAJ&dq=Edith+Clark+Cowles&pg=PA187 |language=en}}

The family lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Pass Christian, Mississippi before moving to Richmond, Virginia in 1894. Clark attended the Virginia Randolph Ellett School and, at age 19, worked as a stenographer to fund art classes at the Art Club of Richmond.{{Cite web|url=http://thejohnsoncollection.org/adele-clark/|title=Adele Clark|website=The Johnson Collection, LLC|language=en|access-date=March 18, 2020}} In 1906, she went to the New York School of Art on a scholarship, studying under artists including Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, and Kenneth Hayes Miller.

Activism

Clark's activist career began in 1909, when she and 18 other women, including Nora Houston, Ellen Glasgow, Lila Meade Valentine, Kate Waller Barrett, and Mary Johnston,{{Cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Clark_Ad%C3%A8le_1882-1983 |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia Virginia |title=Adèle Clark (1882–1983) |publisher=Virginia Foundation for the Humanities}} founded the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia; she served as its secretary for one year, and also as a committee chair and head of the group's lobby in the Virginia General Assembly.

In 1910, she was a delegate to the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Washington, D.C.{{Cite web|url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0014-2/menu.html|title=Oral History Interview with Adele Clark, February 28, 1964|publisher=The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill|work=Oral Histories of the American South}} Clark and Nora Houston would set up also set up their easels at the corner of Fifth and Broad Streets in downtown Richmond to share their "street corner sketches"—chalk drawings on rolls of paper that illustrated their oratory. "Lots of people made speeches, but we were the only ones sketching, and that really drew crowds," Clark once remembered.{{Cite news|title=Personality Profile: Miss Adele Clark|last=Hyde|first=Jo|date=September 16, 1956|work=Richmond Times-Dispatch|page=25}} During their chalk talks, Clark and Houston spoke about women's suffrage and handed out leaflets to people who approached.{{Cite book|first=Marie|last=Tyler-McGraw|pages=236, 243|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ViOxxN4lHTkC&pg=PA236|year=1994|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|title=At the falls: Richmond, Virginia and its people|isbn=9780807844762}}

When the Art Club of Richmond dissolved in 1917, Clark and Houston opened a studio together. The professional space became known as the "Atelier," and its class offerings—including art history, painting, and drawing—fostered the talents of a new generation of artists, including the painter Theresa Pollak. Two years later, Clark and Houston founded the Virginia Academy of Fine Arts and Handicrafts. In the months before the 1920 elections, when there were threats and rumors of spurious challenges against black women voters, Clark and Houston invited black leaders to their studio to plan ways to confront the issue. They decided that the white suffragists would patrol polling locations in cars.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/visiblewomennewe00hewi|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/visiblewomennewe00hewi/page/88 88]|first=Suzanne|last=Lebsock|title=Visible women: new essays on American activism|publisher=University of Illinois Press|chapter=Woman Suffrage and White Supremacy: A Case Study|editor-first=Nancy A.|editor-last=Hewitt|editor2-first=Suzanne|editor2-last=Lebsock|year=1993}} Clark and Houston continued to be involved in the interracial movement after this election. They also participated in art-related activism, campaigning for the resurrection of the Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts, which opened in 1930 as the Richmond Academy of Arts and later became the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

When women were given the vote in 1920, the Equal Suffrage League became the Virginia League of Women Voters, and Clark was its first chair before becoming president the next year. She was its president from 1921 to 1925, and then again from 1929 to 1944. Clark was elected to the board of the National League of Women Voters in 1924 as a regional director, and in 1925 she was elected Second Vice-president, a position she held until 1928. Also in 1928, Clark and Houston bought a house together on Chamberlayne Avenue in Richmond, which came to be known as "The Brattery."{{Cite journal |first=Harry |last=Kollatz |date=May 26, 2011 |journal=Richmond Magazine |url=http://richmondmagazine.com/news/an-artists-creation-05-26-2011 |title=An Artist's Creation}}

=Government and educational positions=

Clark also held positions in a number of government and educational bodies, including secretary of Governor E. Lee Trinkle's Commission on the Simplification of State and Local Government and of Governor Harry F. Byrd's Liberal Arts College for Women Commission,{{Cite web|url=https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=vcu-cab/vircu00102.xml|title=Biographical/Historical Information|work=A Guide to the Adele Goodman Clark Papers|publisher=Virginia Commonwealth University}} and dean of women at the College of William and Mary. During the New Deal, she was a field supervisor for the National Reemployment Service before becoming, in 1936, the director of the Virginia Arts Project in the Works Progress Administration.{{Cite book |last=McDaid |first=Jennifer Davis |title=Dictionary of Virginia Biography |publisher=Library of Virginia |year=2006 |isbn=9780884901990 |editor-last=Bearss |editor-first=Sarah B. |volume=3 |page=260 |chapter=Clark, Adèle Goodman}}

She was on the Virginia Arts Commission from 1941 to 1964, having helped establish it in 1916.{{Cite web|url=http://www.vahistorical.org/arvfind/clark.htm|publisher=Virginia Historical Society|title=Adèle Clark Papers|access-date=2011-12-23|archive-date=2011-12-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111205023046/http://vahistorical.org/arvfind/clark.htm|url-status=dead}} Clark, who also put her campaign for women's suffrage into her artistic work, commented that her art and her activism were related, saying, "I've always tried to combine my interest in art with my interest in government."{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=suYvrYXrsxwC&pg=PA69|last=Mack|pages=69–70 |first=Charles R. |title=Paper Pleasures: Five Centuries of Drawings and Watercolors|publisher=University of South Carolina Press|year=1995|isbn=9781570030659}}

File:Adele Clark VWM Statue.jpg.]]

Personal life

She met fellow artist Nora Houston at the Art School of Richmond, where she had previously taken classes under Lillie Logan{{cite book|author=Raleigh Lewis Wright|title=Artists in Virginia before 1900: an annotated checklist|url=https://archive.org/details/artistsinvirgini00wrig|url-access=registration|year=1983|publisher=University Press of Virginia|isbn=978-0-8139-0998-1}} and where she taught after returning to Virginia. Houston became Clark's life partner until her death in 1942. Soon after Nora Houston died in 1942, Clark's cousin Willoughby Ions, also an artist, moved in with Clark at the Chamberlayne Avenue house she had shared with Houston.{{Cite book|first1=Beth|last1=Marschak|first2=Alex|last2=Lorch|title=Lesbian and Gay Richmond|year=2008|publisher=Arcadia Publishing|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9MMAg_NnwQUC&pg=PA14|pages=14–16|isbn=9780738553689}}

Clark, an Episcopalian, converted to Roman Catholicism, Houston's religion, on November 21, 1942.{{Cite journal|last=Mahon|first=Charles E.|date=December 22, 1967|title=Adele Clark: A Woman for All Seasons|journal=Catholic Virginian|pages=16}}Bonis, Ray. "Adèle Clark: The Artist as Activist." Virginia Women: Their Lives and Times, edited by Cynthia A. Kierner and Sandra Gioia Treadway, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 2016, p.154. Clark chaired the Richmond Diocesan Council of Catholic Women's Legislative Committee from 1949 to 1959. She continued to be outspoken on political issues, opposing the Equal Rights Amendment in the belief that it was unnecessary.

Clark died in a retirement community in Richmond, Virginia,{{cite web|title=Adèle Clark (1882–1983)|url=http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Clark_Ad%C3%A8le_1882-1983#start_entry|website=encyclopediavirginia.org|publisher=Virginia Foundation for the Humanities|accessdate=March 16, 2016}} on June 4, 1983, aged 100.

References

External links

{{Commons category-inline}}
[http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0014-2/menu.html Documenting the American South: Oral History Interview with Adele Clark, February 28, 1964]. Audio and transcripts.
[https://gallery.library.vcu.edu/exhibits/show/adeleclark Adèle Clark, Artist and Activist]. Online exhibit, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries
[https://archives.library.vcu.edu/repositories/5/resources/279 Finding Aid to the Adele Clark Papers], Special Collections and Archives, James Branch Cabell Library, VCU Libraries, Richmond, Virginia.
[https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/35124173/adele-goodman-clark Find A Grave] memorial page.

Category:1882 births

Category:1983 deaths

Category:20th-century American painters

Category:20th-century American women painters

Category:American women centenarians

Category:Suffragists from Virginia

Category:American women's rights activists

Category:American arts administrators

Category:Women arts administrators

Category:College of William & Mary faculty

Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism

Category:Federal Art Project administrators