IA series of pavilions appear to rise out of placid ponds at Crystal Bridges, the Arkansas museum designed by famed architect Moshe Safdie.
Regina Cole
Until 2011, the reason to travel to Bentonville, Arkansas was to do business with Wal-Mart. But now, the town in the northwestern corner of the state is home to one of America’s great art museums, the first major art museum to open in the United States since 1974.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art gives us a compelling reason to travel to Bentonville. Located just a block from downtown, it is the brainchild of Alice Walton, the daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. A life long art collector, she launched the project in 2005, and the museum opened to the public in 2011.
For its location, she chose a ravine in a 120-acre piece of land owned by her family; for the design, she turned to Moshe Safdie. The Israeli/Canadian/American architect first came to international attention with Habitat 67at Montreal’s Expo 67. The Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem, Israel, and Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Resort are among his more recent projects. His main office is located in Somerville, MA.
Safdie designed Crystal Bridges as a series of arch-roofed pavilions that appear to float above two ponds at the bottom of the ravine. Additional structures are nestled into the steeply sloping terrain on either side; they contain galleries, classrooms, a library, a lecture hall, and curatorial and administrative offices.
When approached via the main entrance, Crystal Bridges first appears as a row of concrete columns. “Where’s the museum?” visitors may wonder as they walk to the railing at the edge of the ravine. When they peer down, the astonishing buildings reveal themselves as gray concrete outcrops banded in raw red cedar and curved to echo the shape of the hillside.
“The concept of ‘going down in’ and ‘not looking up’ was a key part of the planning of the museum,” says Alice Walton. “You explore something that unfolds a little at a time.”
The collection, which encompasses American art from the Colonial period to the present, is arranged chronologically. Highlights include such crowd pleasers as a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington, Asher B. Durand’s Kindred Spirits, Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter, and Andy Warhol’s Coca-Cola (3). Art is effectively displayed in spacious, well-lit galleries overlooking the ponds’ clear blue water. Plenty of comfortable seating allows visitors to linger and enjoy favorite pieces. The central pavilion houses the museum restaurant, Eleven, which serves modern American comfort food with an emphasis on traditions that hail from the “High South” region.
Wal-Mart critics point out that, while the stunning new museum is a cultural treasure, the company would do well to pay its workers a living wage with all that money. The museum has amassed over $488 million in assets, and over $317 million of the project’s cost was donated by Alice Walton. (A 2013 Forbes ranking of the world’s richest people placed the Wal-Mart heiress at No. 16, with an estimated net worth of $26.3 billion.)
For Alice Walton, establishing this museum in a part of the country underserved by art was a public-spirited way to spend some of her inherited wealth. Admission to Crystal Bridges is free to the public and part of Walton’s endowment is earmarked for school buses, box lunches and substitute teachers for school field trips.
“I get hundreds of thank-you notes, and these kids say, ‘I’ve never been to a museum, I thought only rich people went to museums,’” Walton says. “To me, people everywhere need access to art and that’s what we didn’t have here and that’s why Crystal Bridges is so important that it be located here.”