The Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives will continue its programming for the exhibit “William Clark and the Art of the Gilded Age” on August 12 and 13 with a book discussion and presentation with Bill Dedman, author of the New York Times bestselling book Empty Mansions.
On August 12, 4 p.m., at the Clark Chateau, 321 W. Broadway, Dedman will lead a book discussion about Empty Mansions.

On August 13, 6 p.m., at the Copper King Mansion, 219 W. Granite, a book presentation and reception will be held with Dedman.

Empty Mansions is a nonfiction mystery of wealth and loss — and a secretive heiress named Huguette Clark. Though she owned palatial homes in Santa Barbara and Connecticut and New York, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Empty Mansions unravels the story of her remarkable family, from the father, W.A. Clark, the copper king, founder of Las Vegas, and controversial U.S. senator, to his daughter, the generous artist who held a ticket on the Titanic and was still living in New York City on 9/11. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Bill Dedman, who discovered Huguette's story for NBC News, has collaborated with Huguette Clark's cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have conversations with her.
In a story that spans nearly all of American history in three generations, Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the talented daughter, born into a family of fortune and privilege, who hides herself from the outside world. The authors reveal a complex portrait of the enigmatic Huguette and her intimate circle—including her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune.
Bill Dedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and co-author of the No. 1 New York Times bestselling biography Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune. Dedman uncovered the case of the reclusive copper heiress Huguette Clark in 2010, documenting her life in a series of reports for NBC News. Dedman and Clark's cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., co-wrote the nonfiction Empty Mansions about Clark and her father, the Gilded Age industrialist and senator William A. Clark. A TV series based on Empty Mansions is under development. Dedman is a frequent speaker for nonprofit organizations, foundations, and financial companies, emphasizing the lessons learned from Huguette Clark's mistakes in estate planning. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1989 for The Color of Money, a series of articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on racial discrimination by mortgage lenders in middle-income black neighborhoods

“William Clark and the Art of the Gilded Age” is sponsored by Butte-Silver Bow Archives, the University of Montana’s Montana Museum of Art and Culture, and Humanities Montana.

For additional questions, contact the Archives at 406-782-3280.