Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AK


The museum interior looking out to Mark di Suvero, Lowell’s Ocean, 2005-2008

The museum exterior

Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2009 and the view of the contemporary collection

Miriam Schapiro, A Mayan Color, 1984

New acquisition of Andy Warhol, Coca-Cola (3), 1962 & Dolly Parton, 1985

Roy Lichtenstein, Still Life with Mirror, 1972, Tom Wessselmann, Smoker #9, 1973, & Wayne Thiebaud, Supine Woman, 1963

Charles Demuth, Oranges and Artichokes, 1926

Stuart Davis, Still Life with Flowers, 1930 (in the middle) and other Davis paintings

Edward Hopper, Blackwell’s Island, 1928

Marsden Hartley, Vase of Flowers, 1916 (left) & Painting No. 69, 1917 (right), Reverse oil on glass

Marsden Hartley paintings in Alfred Stieglitz Collection

Marsden Hartley, Red Flowers and Sailboat, ca. 1935-1936

Thomas Hart Benton, Tobacco Sorters, 1941

Gari Melchers, The Embroideress (The Portrait of Mrs. Hitchcock), ca. 1889 (right)

Frederic Remington, Cowpuncher’s Lullaby, 1906

Winslow Homer, The Return of the Gleaner, 1867 (left) & Mary Cassatt, The Reader, 1877 (right)

Thomas Eakins, The Art Student (James Wright), 1890 (left) & John Singer Sargent, The Portrait of George Henschel, 1889 (right)

Ammi Phillips, Woman in Black Ruffled Dress, ca. 1835

Edward Dalton Marchant, Samuel Beals Thomas, with His Wife, Sarah Kellogg Thomas, and Their Two Daughters, Abigail and Pauline, 1830

William Jacob Hays, Sr. Three Orchids, 1867

Marin Johnson Heade, installation of plants and birds paintings, ca. 1863-1864

Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirit, 1838

Thomas Cole, The View of Mount Etna, 1842

Thomas Moran, Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn, ca. 1862

Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808

Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808
Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808


Another memorable place that I visited during my Christmas holidays is Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, a diaphanous shrine to American fine art. The museum, founded by Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, opened on 11 November 2011 in an area that lacks any large fine art museums. First major art museum opened since 1974, the museum had $488 million in assets as of August 2008, of which over $317 million has been donated by Alice Walton. The museum first attracted public attention with Alice Walton’s purchase of the coveted Asher B. Durand landscape entitled Kindred Spirits  (Photo 4) from the New York Public Library for more than $35 million in a sealed auction in May 2005. Calming the concerns that a major American work of art will be forever disappear from the public eye, Walton revealed the extent of the ambition for the museum. I found the museum’s collection of  Colonial and 19th century work one of the best in the country covering well-known paintings such as Charles Willson Peals’s George Washington, 1780-82, Kindred Spirits, many strong Hudson River School paintings, excellent Thomas Eakins (Photo 9) paintings, including Professor Benjamin Howard Rand, 1874 and amusing oddities like Edward Dalton Marchant‘s portrait of Samuel Beals Thomas family (Photo 7).

The museum continues its ambitious acquisition program: in September 2012, the museum announced the acquisition of a major 1960 painting by Mark Rothko entitled No. 210/No. 211 (Orange). The abstract expressionist painting had been in a private Swiss collection since the 1960s and had only been shown in public twice. When I visited last month, the museum also unveiled the new acquisition of Andy Warhol, Coca-Cola (3), 1962 (Photo 21). The museum’s permanent collection features American art from the Colonial era to contemporary work, and one of the pleasures of the museum for me was abundance of the work from somewhat neglected American painters such as Thomas Hart Benton (Photo 13) and Marsden Hartley (Photos 14-16). One of my favorite pieces was Hartley’s Red Flowers and Sailboat from the early 1930s (Photo 14). The collection feels very personal rather than obligatory historic survey of important artists. Another distinctive feature of the museum is free public admission sponsored by Walmart. Combined with the fact that the museum is located in a region where no similar art institutions exist, the museum visitors were not your typical art museum goers, who are generally older, college educated and white (See here for some statistics). Accordingly, the guards at the museum were very solicitous and helpful in guiding visitors in appropriate behavior rather than standing around and then swooping at the last minute to chide you not to get too close to the art work. The visitors were overwhelmingly family, many with young children (this might have been due to the timing of my visit during Christmas holidays) and many who have never been to any art museums before, and I was immensely encouraged by the efforts of many people awkwardly and intensely trying to look at the work. Only if jaded New York museum goers were as serious!

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