Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock
Tuesday, May 24, 2005: A Brick about Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Last Monday, Wal-Mart’s Alice Walton announced she and also her family’s foundation would build a museum surrounded by a park near downtown Bentonville, Arkansas, her companies’ headquarters.
There was a clue about this a couple of weeks earlier when major news media, being New York-based, reported (as did local media), that Miss Walton bought a 19th-century Hudson River School masterpiece that long has been exhibited at the New York Public Library. (Go ahead, plug “Walton” and “Durand” into Yahoo news or Google news, and you’ll see how big a deal some thought this to be.)
The plans are by the architect who did (actually, redesigned) Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the grounds will be by a similarly credentialed landscaper. Sure, it would’ve been great if she’d hired local, but hiring the best, period, is just as good.
In the next four years as it’s being built, there’ll be plenty of time for writerly fun: Within hours Monday, I had notes for several satires. Now, this week, it is time to be grateful. The museum is a good thing.
One of the Democrat-Gazette articles quoted more than one more non-local business analyst to say this is not a Disney World type of tourism magnet. I hope that fact continues to be expanded in reporting.
My take on that would go in the wrong direction this morning; there’s time enough. Suffice it to say now that Crystal Bridges is good for the area and its residents. Not everything has to translate into money, into the shallow industry of tourism.
This is how major if smaller museums get going. One good example not yet used by any commentator so far as I’ve read– but it’s the first that came to my mind — is the Amon Carter in Fort Worth. Actually, the Carter and several other museums lie on the perimeter of that beautiful park in downtown Fort Worth, including the Kimbell.
Lots of money from just one or a few benefactors got these halls going. Oil money, appropriate for the era.
The rest of the country should shut up and let us build our museum. Miss Alice won’t buy all your masterpieces. We don’t need that many. -30-
