Explorers club

DEFINITION

Founded in 1904 in New York City, member focus is a "wide-ranging fascination for the world's wilder places", visiting them, and collecting artwork and artifacts reflecting those places. Club meetings are famous for the prominence of the attendees such as John D. Rockefeller and Charles Lindbergh, formal dinners with displays of wild animals, and exotic dishes featuring foods from geographical places of interest. The Club has a distinguished collection of paintings, sculptures and artifacts. Represented American artists include Arctic-scene painters Albert Operti and Frank Wilbert Stokes and portraitists Robert Brackman and Edwin Tappan Adney, whose subjects were Arctic explorers Admirals Peary and Amundsen. From 1965, the Club's lavishly appointed quarters have been the residence of Stephen Carlton Clark, heir to the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and founder of Cooperstown's Baseball Hall of Fame. It is a six-story Tudor-style building at 46 East 70th Street, and when occupied by the Clark family, housed one of the premier art collections in New York City. Source: Robert McCracken Peck, 'The Explorers Club', "Magazine Antiques", December 2004