Crystal Bridges: America’s Latest Art Museum

This fall, a brand new art museum opened in an out of the way town amid a lot of fuss. Does Bentonville, Arkansas ring a bell? Its the home of WalMart and Sam Walton’s daughter, Alice, with the help of the Walton Family Foundation, has put together what she hopes will be a world class museum. A group of exhibition halls are now nestled in a wooded glen not too far from the WalMart corporate facilities, a series of nature trails weave through the property and a very nice collection of art in spread throughout the facilities.

The focus of the museum is upon American art in all of its facets and Alice Walton has given a sizeable amount of money to buy up valuable works such a Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington and Kindred Spirits by Asher B. Durand for display at the museum. There is also a nice selection of colonial portraiture as the museum seems to be scouting for the “name brands” of American art history. Also the museum is exhibiting modern and contemporary art.

The fuss, and it is a big fuss, is over the WalMart connection. Critics, and there are many, are angry that the Walton family built a large scale museum at a time when so many people are struggling to keep their lives together and WalMart employees have seen there insurance costs rise despite low wages. Occupy Wall Street has even targeted the family by passing out information concerning their worth and their indifference to their employees.

Sadly, many of our great cultural institutions have been built by wealth that had been collected on the blood of the workers. The Whitney Museum, in New York, was built on both Vanderbilt and Standard Oil money. Marshall Field built the Field Museum in Chicago and Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate who some people hold responsible for the Homestead strike and riots, doled out endless millions across the country for the building of libraries, universities, music halls and other major buildings. It’s a story as old as the Pyramids.

From an artistic standpoint, Crystal Bridges chose to focus on American art. Because American art had barely developed when modern art broke out in France, American realism is a much more limited subject than is found in European museums. Instead of rooms filled with schools of Baroque and Rococo art, American collections display a hodgepodge of styles, ranging from the fashionable portraiture of the early 1800’s to the eccentric loner visionaries, from the American Impressionists to Pop Art.

As is expected, the better part of the Crystal Bridges collection centers on paintings from the colonial period until the late 19th century. It’s the later 20th century works that the museum is currently fumbling with. There are complaints that the museum displays the lesser works of great artists and that some of these works caters to southern conservative tastes.

But despite the controversies, the museum must be worth a stop if you find your self in that area. One day, I’d like a chance to see the museum. Anyone who has seen the museum, please feel free to post your comments. Let us know what you thought and felt about the experience.

Other works of Fine Art you may enjoy:

The Google Art Project