History
The land that eventually became the museum grounds was previously the undeveloped portion of Cedarmere, poet William Cullen Bryant's retreat from his busy life in New York City. In the 1890s, his family sold all but seven acres to former congressman Lloyd Bryce, who hired Ogden Codman, Jr. to build a Georgian Revival mansion on the high ground in the middle of the property, overlooking nearby Hempstead Harbor. He named it Clayton.
In 1919 Bryant’s heirs sold the estate to Henry Clay Frick, the co-founder of U.S. Steel, for his son, Childs Frick. The architect Sir Charles Carrick Allow was commissioned to redesign the facade and much of the interior. The Fricks named their home Clayton. Childs Frick and his wife Frances lived at Clayton for almost 50 years, until his death in 1965. The county bought the estate four years later and converted it into a museum, called Nassau County Museum of Art. In 1989, NCMA became a private not-for-profit institution and since has been governed and funded by a private board of trustees which includes many of Long Island’s most prominent business, civic and social leaders.
The Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, which spun off from the Nassau County Museum of Art, operated from 1978 to 2003.
Read more about this topic: Nassau County Museum Of Art
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—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)