Kate and her mother summered in Holly Springs, where the air was considered cleaner than along the Mississippi Delta, and Edward would write his daughter long letters during these absences.

[5] Upon returning to New York City, she enrolled in the Art Students League in 1894;[6] there she studied drawing with John Henry Twachtman and watercolor with Irving Ramsay Wiles.

[5] It was Wiles who introduced her to William Merritt Chase, who would teach her still-life and plein air painting and would serve as her mentor until his death in 1916.

[1] Clark and her mother summered on eastern Long Island during the late 1890s; Cary also traveled to Washington, D.C. for the social season there in 1896, in which year Kate attended classes at the Corcoran School of Art.

[3] Her family is known to have been against her career, and warned her against operating, as her uncle Russell Freeman wrote her, "in spheres of life which belong to men".

[2] She had envisioned library space and a room for the display of fashions in the museum as well, but these could not be included in the final design due to a lack of funds.