"Crystal Bridges" Opens Tomorrow

Bentonville, Arkansas.- The new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opens on November 11th. Art collectors from ArtKabinett network will be in attendance for this important opening. The Museum takes its name from nearby Crystal Spring and the bridge construction incorporated in the building design by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie. A series of pavilions nestled around two creek-fed ponds will house galleries, meeting and classroom spaces, and a large, glass-enclosed gathering hall. Visitor amenities will also include a café on a glass-enclosed bridge overlooking the ponds and a Marlon Blackwell-designed museum store. Sculpture and walking trails will link the Museum's 120-acre park and gardens to downtown Bentonville, Arkansas.  Alice Walton, the daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, spearheaded the Walton Family Foundation's involvement in developing Crystal Bridges. In the past few years, Crystal Bridges has been in the news for numerous arrangements and partnerships with other art galleries to share collections as well as its spending at auction to secure its collection in time for the opening. The museum's permanent collection will feature American art from the Colonial era to contemporary work. Notable works include a Charles Willson Peale portrait of George Washington as well as paintings by George Bellows, Jasper Cropsey, Asher Durand, Thomas Eakins, Marsden Hartley, Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, Charles Bird King, John LaFarge, Stuart Davis, Romare Bearden, Norman Rockwell, Mary McCleary and Walton Ford. Also included are works by Chuck Close, Jasper Johns, Norman Lewis, Alfred Maurer, Jackson Pollock and Tom Wesselman. Many of Crystal Bridges' paintings were on extended loan to other U.S. institutions. and two works, Richard Caton Woodville's "War News from Mexico" and Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait's "The Life of a Hunter: A Tight Fix" were included in "American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915", a traveling exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sculpture will also figure in the collection, on view in interior galleries and along outdoor sculpture trails. Sculptors represented in the permanent collection include Paul Manship, Mark di Suvero, Ted Jones and James Turrell.