Clark Art Institute

The Clark sits in a small college town in the hills of western Massachusetts, a long way from any big city, and that was partly the point. Sterling Clark, heir to the Singer sewing-machine fortune, and his French wife Francine spent decades buying art in Paris and New York. When they decided in the 1950s where to give it, the Cold War was on, and Clark, worried that a great city museum might be a target in a nuclear war, chose remote Williamstown, near the college his family had a tie to.

The collection they left is intimate and full of pleasures. Clark loved Renoir above all and bought more than thirty of his paintings, so the galleries glow with soft-skinned figures and flowers. There are Winslow Homers, Sargents, silver and prints, hung in domestic-scaled rooms.

In 2014 the architect Tadao Ando added a low building of concrete and glass set beside a tiered reflecting pool that mirrors the surrounding hills.