Empty Mansions

expenses and had sold the painting because she needed the cash. Why would Huguette Clark be broke?
    The Corcoran’s president and director, David C. Levy, wrote with concern to Huguette’s half-great-grandniece, Carla Hall Friedman. After giving $1 million over the decade of the 1990s, Huguette had stopped, cold turkey. Her donation for 2003: $1,000. Carla, a great-granddaughter of Huguette’s half-sister Katherine, was a member of a Corcoran committee, an informal advocate for the W. A. Clark Collection. She had never met Huguette, though she lived in Manhattan, but they knew of each other. Huguette had been a bridesmaid for Carla’s grandmother and had sent Carla a wedding present of money back in the 1970s, to which Carla replied with a thank-you note, of course. Carla had sent Christmas cards to Huguette, and Carla’s mother, Erika Hall, had spoken with Huguette on the phone, and sent flowers at Christmas.
    Huguette’s relatives were beginning to be concerned about more thanher declining support of the Corcoran.Agnes Albert, Huguette’s niece, had told her children before she died in 2002 that attorney Bock had rudely told her that she was not to contact Huguette directly anymore. After years of warm relations with Anna and Huguette, Agnes was shocked by this, her children say. Agnes had warned that Huguette must be “in bad hands.” Bock said he doesn’t recall this conversation, but his instructions from Huguette hadn’t changed: Don’t give out her number, don’t say where she is, and take a message, no matter who is calling.
    Similarly, cousin Paul Newell’s contacts with Huguette ended abruptly. In March 2004, she invited him to make a private visit to Bellosguardo, and then he never heard from her again. Their last conversation had been as friendly as ever, and he said she sounded in good health and good spirits. He continued to call Bock as before, asking for Huguette to return the call. He heard nothing. He grew suspicious, thinking that either she had fallen ill or their communications were being blocked. Attorney Bock’s time logs show that he continued to pass on Newell’s messages.
    Bock denies blocking anyone. Huguette was free to make any phone calls she wanted from her hospital room. He said he merely explained to the relatives that Huguette had gone into a reclusive phase, that she seemed to be returning fewer calls. His guess was that she was embarrassed about her worsening hearing loss, and at age ninety-seven she was no longer comfortable talking on the phone. This also was during the time when Huguette was wrestling with the decision about moving from Beth Israel North to South, but of course the relatives knew none of this. They didn’t even know she was in a hospital.
    The Corcoran’s director, Levy, wrote to Carla, warning that the attorney could be blocking Huguette from making donations. The Corcoran and the relatives were unaware that Huguette’s unbridled generosity to individuals had caused her cash-poor situation. Levy warned darkly thatsomething “insidious” might be going on. Carla offered to help the Corcoran. Though Carla expressed to her family that she was appalled by the Gehry plan,she offered to write to Huguette to talk it up, stressing how it would make room for more of her father’s art to be displayed. Carla speculated to Levy that her elderly aunt probably had “little or no understanding” of Gehry’s post-structuralist design.
    IN CONVERSATION WITH HUGUETTE

 
    Huguette told me that she had indeed studied Gehry’s design but wasn’t pleased with the way it clashed with the traditional Corcoran building and the Clark Wing. She said, “I think it’s kind of fussy.”
    The Gehry plan was in trouble. “Barring the emergence of an angel bearing $100 million,”
The Washington Post
reported, “it appears that the Corcoran’s Gehry dream is unlikely to come true.” Huguette would not be that angel. The Corcoran board scuttled the Gehry plan in 2005, and Levy resigned. Losing millions each year, the museum laid off staff, closed two days a week, and began to sell off some of the W. A. Clark Collection, including his prized majolica and Persian rugs, and other treasures from Huguette’s childhood home.
    • • •
    A new idea for cultivating ties to the Clark family came from the Corcoran’s new director, Paul Greenhalgh, who offered tohost a proposed Clark family reunion. It was at this reunion the relatives learned about criminal charges