September 17, 2025
By Jamie Marshall
Photographs by John Gruen
Off a winding country road above the village of Lakeville, a discreet sign marks a driveway that leads past a cherry orchard to a tidy courtyard and a barn-like structure with cedar shake siding, a metal roof, and a stone chimney. A pair of sugar maples flanks the entry, where Bhutanese gongs grace a wall to the right of the front door. The home of real estate developer and art maven Maureen Jerome, Clouds is an outlier in the land of white clapboard Colonials and classic farmhouses. Built in 2016, the 6,000-square-foot house is a reflection of Jerome’s connection to the land, her love of big spaces, natural materials and—most important—her passion for art.
The New York City and Lakeville resident came to her calling in a roundabout way. “When I met my husband, John, his best friend was the artist Donald Judd,” she recalls. “He became godfather to our two children. He inspired me to become an art historian and I was in turn inspired by his vision. He taught me about scale, light, and space.”
Jerome left a management career to attend the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU and became president of the Judd Foundation in 1994, after the artist passed away. She left the foundation in 2003 when she launched ARTLIFEdesign, a real estate design development firm focused on the creation of artistically sensitive properties. Her goal was to design and build homes that aligned with her visual world and lifestyle. “I work from the inside out,” she says. “The site I select, the style of architecture, the scale of the rooms—the ‘all of it’ I think of as a big sculpture that is one harmonious environment.”
At the time, she and her husband were spending weekends in Connecticut to be near their daughters at The Hotchkiss School. To achieve her vision, Jerome bought 150 acres with good access on two roads, put half the land in conservation, and then designed five homes on 15-acre plots, sited so that they can’t be seen from the road or from each other. The landscape is primarily wildflowers, native grasses, and pollinator plants. Clouds was the last of the group; she and John (who died in 2021) moved in soon after they sold their weekend home in town.
Though the house has three floors, it was designed so that the couple could live on the main floor when they weren’t accommodating family and friends. From the entry, a 100-foot gallery with a 20-foot ceiling runs the length of the house, to a screened porch and a pool area. To the right, a light-filled living room and kitchen, dining area and den, which all face west over a mix of meadow, field, and wetlands that disappear into the rolling swoop of the horizon. To the left is a spacious primary suite. Each room is decorated with a mix of furnishings and accessories, most of which Jerome has gathered over the years. “I just use things I have and that I like,” she says.
Her collection of 20th- and 21st-century artists—much of which is on display throughout the house—is vast and diverse. Think Judd, Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg, Paul Chaleff, among others, as well as regional artists such as Henry Klimowicz.
“I have very famous blue-chip artists and local artists,” she says. “Somehow it all fits.”
Of Clouds, she says, “There is no frou-frou. The palette is totally neutral. And every once in a while, I use a splash of color; but otherwise it’s really not about the furniture in the house. It’s about the art and the views.”
