The Remarkable Landscape Design of Mary Mowbray Clarke – Exhibition Opening

<p>This exhibition about Mary Mowbray Clarke reveals a remarkable woman whose contributions to the fields of preservation, art education, and landscape architecture continue to have a lasting impact today. As the mother of the Modern Arts Movement, she organized art exhibitions, ran an influential bookstore, and became the only known woman foreman of a WPA project. Attending the Art Students League at Age 16, Mary grew up with no formal education.  Consistently pushing boundaries, Mary helped spark the Modern Arts Movement, organizing the revolutionary 1913 Armory Show with her husband, John F. Mowbray-Clarke. The exhibition was the first of its kind on an international scale, showcasing European artists such as Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh, and American artists such as Arthur B Davies and Edward Hopper.  Afterward, Mary helped build the South Mountain Road art colony called Brocken, attracting figures such as Maxwell Anderson, Henry Varnum Poor, and Ruth Reeves.</p> <p>From 1916-1927, Mary co-ran the women-owned Sunwise Turn, an influential bookstore and meeting place for progressive social movements that became a hotbed of artistic activity and anarchist political thought in New York City during the nineteen-teens and twenties. In 1920, Mary inspired a young intern, Peggy Guggenheim, who was influenced by Mowbray-Clarke. It was at the bookshop that Peggy was first exposed to the avant-garde artists and writers who would later come to shape her world as a patron of the arts, and that formed the basis of the Guggenheim and MOMA museum collections.</p> <p>During the Great Depression, Mary studied landscape architecture and was given state and later federal New Deal funds to build the Dutch Gardens. The budget was tight, with only money for labor; Mary negotiated that the plants be donated and that the bricks be recycled. An ardent naturalist, the garden combined native plants with traditional Dutch bulbs to create a unique landscape that was revolutionary at the time but which forms the basis of landscape architecture today. The Garden opened to great fanfare, seeing 5k monthly visitors during this time.</p> <p>Upon finishing the Gardens, Mary corresponded with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. After meeting Mary, Eleanor claimed, “I think I found a…good field for women to work in.”</p>