"Bellosguardo," Huguette Clark's estate in Santa Barbara, will be turned into a museum of the heiress's art collection.

Reclusive heiress Huguette Clark

After heiress Huguette Clark died last month at 104, general observers and art lovers alike were anxious to learn the fate of her impressive art collection. Her holdings include work by Monet,John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, and Renoir. The answer finally arrived yesterday, when lawyers filed her will at a Manhattan courthouse. Turns out, she's donating it to us!

Clark's entire art collection will be displayed publicly at her 24-acre, $100 million oceanfront Santa Barbara estate. The only work to be separated from the collection is a 1907 original from Monet's "Water Lilies" series, one of her most valuable works. That painting will be donated to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (Her father, steel tycoon and former senatorWilliam A. Clark, bought it from Monet's Paris gallery in 1930. It was last publicly displayed in 1925.) If you're wondering what her family is getting, the answer is bupkis. Clark had no descendants, and was reportedly distrustful of her more distant relatives.

The sometimes-musician and artist was apparently quite the party girl in the 1930s, but went into relative isolation after the death of her mother in 1963. (The most recent extant photograph of her was also taken in the '30s.) Throughout her life, Clark quietly assembled impressive collections of art, rare books, dolls, and musical instruments, including a multimillion-dollar Stradivarious violin. She also acquired a number of properties: a 42-room apartment on Fifth Avenue, the estate in Santa Barbara, and a country house in Connecticut. Her art, book, and instrument collections will all become part of the museum's collection. Her dolls, which are creepy but also apparently worth millions of dollars, will go to her nurse and friend Hadassah Peri, along with $40 million of additional assets.

Some may have expected Clark to donate all of her holdings to the Corcoran, to which she has family ties. Her father donated his own, 200-piece art collection there in 1925, and it built and named a wing after him. In 1929, the younger Clark displayed seven paintings of her own at the museum, and an art deco greeting card she made was included in a 1978 Corcoran homemade card exhibition.

The reclusive heiress's story is made even more tabloid-ready by the fact that the Manhattan district attorney's office is currently investigating both her lawyer and accountant for mismanaging her affairs. Clark left the two men $500,000 each, and named them executors to her estate as well as board members of the foundation that will establish the Santa Barbara museum.

Clark, whose fortune is estimated at $400 million, died at Beth Israel Medical Center. She had been living in Manhattan hospitals since 1990 despite having no reported medical illness until recently. Her three estates — including the future Santa Barbara museum — were meticulously cared for by staff in her 21-year absence.