Alfred Corning Clark

American philanthropist

Alfred Corning Clark I (November 14, 1844 – April 8, 1896) was an American philanthropist and patron of the arts.

Between 1888 and 1891, Clark built the first gymnasium in Cooperstown, New York. Although it remained popular, by the 1920s the facility had become obsolete and was demolished and rebuilt by his son Edward Severin Clark. A new Alfred Corning Clark Gymnasium opened in 1930, and featured such improvements as a swimming pool and bowling alleys. The current successor to the 1930 ACC Gym is the Clark Sports Center a greatly expanded facility, completed in the mid 1980s, located on the former grounds of Iroquois Farm (the F. Ambrose Clark estate) under the direction of Stephen Carlton Clark, Jr., the great grandson of the gym's founder.

Clark's donation of $50,000 to the piano prodigy Jozef Hofmann in 1887 spared the eleven year old from having to complete a fifty recital American tour that had been criticized by Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. With this financial security, Hofmann and his family returned to Europe where the boy could receive a broader education before resuming his concert career.

Clark assembled a collection of French academic paintings. He purchased Pollice Verso (Thumbs Down) (1872) by Jean Léon Gérôme from the estate of Alexander Turney Stewart. It is now in the collection of the Phoenix Art Museum. In 1888, he purchased Gerome's The Snake Charmer (1880), but his widow sold it after his death. His son Sterling re acquired the painting in 1942 for the museum he founded, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Clark donated works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including Madame Gaye (1865) by Marià Fortuny. Clark commissioned Barnard to create a fountain sculpture for the courtyard of The Dakota. The Great God Pan (1894 1898) was never installed at the apartment building, and Clark's family donated it to Columbia University after his death.

In memory of her first husband, Elizabeth Scriven Clark Potter built the Alfred Corning Clark Memorial Chapel, at 240 East 31st Street, Manhattan, New York City, which was consecrated on December 7, 1904. Brotherly Love, an opera based on the relationship between Clark and Skougaard, debuted in Norway in May 2016.