Whispers & Legacies: A Conversation about the Clarks, the Posts, and the Palés

This event is free of charge, but you must register in advance to attend. 

Most families have secrets, but some have more than most. The Clark family and those they touched are a case in point. William Andrews Clark, Jr. and Sr., Huguette Clark, Harrison Post, and George Palé all lived lives shrouded by varying degrees of seclusion, secrecy, and silence, but they had very different ideas about how their legacies and their archives might endure (or not) into the future.

How do their decisions and secrets impact future generations of their own families and the researchers examining them? How do we tell a person’s life story when the evidence is gone, and all that remains is rumor? Why do some of us have the family history collecting impulse, while others don’t? How do wealth and reputation change people’s relationships to secrets?

Please join us for a conversation about the ways in which secrets, rumors, family history, and inheritance impact the stories we tell, featuring Liz Brown (author of Twilight Man and great-grandniece of William Andrews Clark, Jr.), Bill Dedman (co-author of Empty Mansions), Stephen Gruse (grandson of George Palé), and Sue Lombardi (cousin of Harrison Post), moderated by the Clark Library’s Rebecca Fenning Marschall.

Images (left to right): William Andrews Clark, Jr., 1925; Collection of Liz Brown; Huguette M. Clark, 1916; Clark Library Institutional Archive; Harrison Post, ca. 1922?; Clark Library Institutional Archive; George Palé, ca 1925; Collection of Stephen Gruse.