Olivier Meslay took up leadership of the Clark in July 2016, but his connection with Northern Berkshire County extends far beyond that.
“My relationship with the Clark is 25 years long, because we started – my wife and our three kids – to be here for one year as fellows, both of us, and this is what triggered our relationship with the Clark, with Williamstown, and with the people here,” he told WAMC.
The Clark’s role in the Berkshires grew under Meslay’s leadership.
“We have expanded the offer of programs dramatically," said the director. "I think that we have now, only this summer as an example, we have four exhibitions at the same time, we have exhibitions in the winter, and this is something very important, plus a lot of new public programs. Music, concert, lectures, films, theater, dance. I mean, we have a lot of things happening.”
He moved to push the museum beyond its core collection into a space that welcomes new voices.
“Now we have a very contemporary art aspect, said Meslay. "That is something which was probably not so- It was existing, there were exhibitions with contemporary artists, but it was not something which was ingrained in the institution. Now it is really. We have a curator for contemporary project. Even if we do not collect contemporary art, we have at least two exhibitions, sometimes three exhibitions a year which are about contemporary art.”
Meslay is particularly proud of the move to offer free admission to the Clark between January and March for the past three years – a policy that primarily benefits residents rather than summer tourists.
Meslay says the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020 marked an inflection point for the institution.
“It was a moment where we needed to reflect on, what is the role of a museum, what is the role of the community, the relationship with the community," he told WAMC. "This is when also we thought, okay, we need to probably give the community a moment for to enjoy the Clark without thinking about what is the cost of it, to feel invited even more precisely than usual.”
He cautioned his yet-to-be-named successor that the cultural sector of Berkshire County comes with its share of idiosyncrasies.
“You cannot come to a place like the Clark, with the process, the idea that you have when you are in a big town," the director explained. "And you know that we are working a lot at this moment with the other institutions in the Berkshires – and this is the Berkshire Arts and Culture Alliance – and we are working a lot on what is defining the cultural institutions in the Berkshires, what are specific challenges and what is the culture here? What is the relationship with, again, with the community, which makes us strong, but also sometimes weak, because during the rest of the year, we do not have always the resources to do what we want.”
Meslay looks forward to more time with his growing family upon stepping down, and says he’s doing so with a sense of pride.
“It's an honor and a gift for somebody like me to be to have been able to run an institution like this," he told WAMC. "It is an incredible institution that people from all over the world, professionally or as sort of just art lovers, this is an institution which is beloved and extremely respected, and it has nothing to do with our scale. We are still a small institution, but the quality of everything that the Clark does in many aspects, which is teaching, researching, or making exhibition and showing art, is at the very top of the everything that people could expect from an institution like that. And this is incredible to be able to say, okay, I was part of that.”
The Clark’s board of trustees says it’s formed a search committee to find Meslay’s replacement before his July 2026 departure.
