Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is an art museum in Bentonville in the U.S. state of Arkansas. It goes back to a foundation of Wal- Mart heiress Alice Walton and displays American art from the colonial period to the present.
On the origin of the museum
The establishment of an art museum in Bentonville goes back to Alice Walton, the daughter of the founder of the retail chain Wal -Mart. The co-heiress of the family fortune had the idea at the headquarters of Wal -Mart to establish a museum of American art and put this foundation assets in the amount of 800 million U.S. dollars. When building served a 300 -hectare forest, in the valley of the stream flowing through here the Crystal Spring was dammed. On both sides of the water body created by architect Moshe Safdie is multi pavilions museum building, where two of the Bach bridging gallery wings of the museum gave the name. After five years of planning and construction, the museum opened on 11 November 2011 for the audience.
Collection
With the systematic build up an art collection Alice Walton began only in parallel with the planning of the museum. In just five years, so, a collection of American art from the colonial period to the present. This is achieved partly to acquire top works, such as the painting Kindred Spirits by Asher Brown Durand. Previously, this significant piece of Hudson River School was one of the New York Public Library, which separated for 35 million U.S. dollars of the painting. At the opening, the museum has a collection of 600 paintings, drawings and sculptures.
The collection includes from the time of the founding of the United States paintings such as portraits of the first president George Washington by Charles Willson Peale as both of Gilbert Stuart. Another example of early American portraiture is the portrait of Mrs. Theodore Atkinson, Jr. ( Frances Deering Wentworth ) by John Singleton Copley. By Charles Bird King, the museum displays the Indians Portrait Ottoe Half Chief, Husband of Eagle of Delight, while with Winter Scene in Brooklyn by Francis Guy one of the early landscape paintings can be seen in the collection.
Asher Brown Durand: Kindred Spirits
John Singer Sargent: Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife
Thomas Eakins: The Art Student ( James Wright)
Among the works from the second half of the 19th century include paintings such as The Life of a Hunter: A Tight Fix by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn by Thomas Moran, The Indian and the Lily by George de Forest Brush or Cattleya Orchid, Two Hummingbirds and a Beetle by Martin Johnson Heade. Examples of portraiture of the late 19th century, Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife by John Singer Sargent or Professor Benjamin Howard Rand and The Art Student ( James Wright) by Thomas Eakins. Typical representatives of American Impressionism are Dennis Miller Bunker, of which the museum has the image Anne Page, and William Merritt Chase, whose paintings Worthington Whittredge in the collection depends.
Already in the 20th century, the painting Excavation at Night by George Wesley Bellows Penn and Jessica have arisen in Black with White Plumes by Robert Henri. From serving in Germany Lyonel Feininger, the museum owns the castle image alley of 1915. From the period between the two world wars are in the collection, Composition ( Still Life) by Arshile Gorky and Still Life with Flowers by Stuart Davis to see. Furthermore the museum shows Rosie the Riveter by Norman Rockwell and Amoskeag Mills # 2 by Charles Sheeler. Examples of the American Pop Art, the sculpture Standing Explosion ( Red) by Roy Lichtenstein and a portrait of Dolly Parton by Andy Warhol. Another sculpture in the collection Alphabet / Good Humor by Claes Oldenburg. Contemporary artists in the museum are Jenny Holzer with her work Venice Installation: Gallery D ( Second Antechamber ) 1990, or incurred in the 21st century works of Walton Ford and The Iceland Soundsuit by Nick Cave.