Over the past decade, as she set about creating the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Northwest Arkansas, Alice Walton has annoyed, alarmed and antagonized not only the art world but much of the rest of the populace too. Her offense? Ms. Walton, the youngest child of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton,100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together. had the audacity to use her wealth to bring American art to a corner of the U.S. that had little. This upset both those who did not see why such a backwater deserved great art and those who would rather have Wal-Mart pay its workers better, a confusion of apples and oranges if ever there was one. Besides, skeptics said, it's impossible to build a comprehensive, world-class collection so quickly—despite the $1.2 billion lavished on this effort.
The reckoning arrived last month when her museum opened in Bentonville, and the results are best described as mixed. The sprawling 201,000-square-foot structure, designed by Boston-based architect Moshe Safdie to span Crystal Spring, contains some excellent works among the 450 on view, drawn from five centuries of art made in what is now the United States. The strengths lie in the colonial era through the early 20th century; later works, added to Ms. Walton's grand design only recently, are mostly mediocre.which applies to the first offshore merchant account only, Throughout, although guided by experts, Ms. Walton has followed her own True North, making idiosyncratic selections designed to celebrate history, nature and the "American spirit," as well as to weave women, as subject and artist, and other lesser-known artists into the narrative of American art.
Her vision makes for some odd moments. A room containing John Singer Sargent's masterly "Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife" and gleaming "Capri Girl on a Rooftop" offers none of the full-length society portraits the artist excelled at, but rather is dominated by two large-scale portraits of women by the far less talented Alfred Maurer. Later on, Andy Warhol is represented solely by his silkscreen portrait of Dolly Parton, a nod to locals but hardly an important work. And Wayne Thiebaud is seen not as a painter of luscious cakes or colorful landscapes,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings， but by his mystifying, uncharacteristic "Supine Woman."
But there are great moments as well. One wall displays 16 of Martin Johnson Heade's iridescent "Gems of Brazil" hummingbird paintings, juxtaposed with five of his floral oil sketches. Asher B. Durand's "Kindred Spirits" (1849), the painting Ms. Walton purchased from the New York Public Library for $35 million, is flanked by the last finished painting by the artist Durand was memorializing—Thomas Cole's "The Good Shepherd" (1848)—and "Home by the Lake" , by Cole's greatest follower,If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards, Frederic Edwin Church. In the Modernist galleries, five canvases by Stuart Davis line one amazing wall.
Fears that Crystal Bridges would sugar-coat American art may be true in the sense that it lacks the latest from profane or transgressive artists like Paul McCarthy, say, or Richard Prince. But the collection does not shrink from issues like race, shown in works by Kara Walker and Kerry James Marshall, or the American Indian experience, which is covered extensively, starting with the collection's earliest painting, James Wooldridge's "Indians of Virginia" .
The inaugural installation, organized chronologically, starts strong in pale olive galleries that make the paintings glow. Along one long, curved wall, visitors see the sweep of early American art, starting with portraits of the Levy-Frank family , attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck I. Interior walls and alcoves highlight important works, like Gilbert Stuart's 1797 portrait of George Washington.
In the next gallery suite, walls painted deep red hold portraits and genre paintings: Works by Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer and Mary Cassatt stand out, but portraits by the lesser-known Dennis Miller Bunker and Gari Melchers hold their own. Another long, curved sweeping wall, this time painted blue, displays the course of landscape painting, starting with Thomas Moran's "Green River, Wyoming" and ending with two early 20th-century works,ceramic magic cube for the medical, a teaser for what comes next.
The reckoning arrived last month when her museum opened in Bentonville, and the results are best described as mixed. The sprawling 201,000-square-foot structure, designed by Boston-based architect Moshe Safdie to span Crystal Spring, contains some excellent works among the 450 on view, drawn from five centuries of art made in what is now the United States. The strengths lie in the colonial era through the early 20th century; later works, added to Ms. Walton's grand design only recently, are mostly mediocre.which applies to the first offshore merchant account only, Throughout, although guided by experts, Ms. Walton has followed her own True North, making idiosyncratic selections designed to celebrate history, nature and the "American spirit," as well as to weave women, as subject and artist, and other lesser-known artists into the narrative of American art.
Her vision makes for some odd moments. A room containing John Singer Sargent's masterly "Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife" and gleaming "Capri Girl on a Rooftop" offers none of the full-length society portraits the artist excelled at, but rather is dominated by two large-scale portraits of women by the far less talented Alfred Maurer. Later on, Andy Warhol is represented solely by his silkscreen portrait of Dolly Parton, a nod to locals but hardly an important work. And Wayne Thiebaud is seen not as a painter of luscious cakes or colorful landscapes,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings， but by his mystifying, uncharacteristic "Supine Woman."
But there are great moments as well. One wall displays 16 of Martin Johnson Heade's iridescent "Gems of Brazil" hummingbird paintings, juxtaposed with five of his floral oil sketches. Asher B. Durand's "Kindred Spirits" (1849), the painting Ms. Walton purchased from the New York Public Library for $35 million, is flanked by the last finished painting by the artist Durand was memorializing—Thomas Cole's "The Good Shepherd" (1848)—and "Home by the Lake" , by Cole's greatest follower,If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards, Frederic Edwin Church. In the Modernist galleries, five canvases by Stuart Davis line one amazing wall.
Fears that Crystal Bridges would sugar-coat American art may be true in the sense that it lacks the latest from profane or transgressive artists like Paul McCarthy, say, or Richard Prince. But the collection does not shrink from issues like race, shown in works by Kara Walker and Kerry James Marshall, or the American Indian experience, which is covered extensively, starting with the collection's earliest painting, James Wooldridge's "Indians of Virginia" .
The inaugural installation, organized chronologically, starts strong in pale olive galleries that make the paintings glow. Along one long, curved wall, visitors see the sweep of early American art, starting with portraits of the Levy-Frank family , attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck I. Interior walls and alcoves highlight important works, like Gilbert Stuart's 1797 portrait of George Washington.
In the next gallery suite, walls painted deep red hold portraits and genre paintings: Works by Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer and Mary Cassatt stand out, but portraits by the lesser-known Dennis Miller Bunker and Gari Melchers hold their own. Another long, curved sweeping wall, this time painted blue, displays the course of landscape painting, starting with Thomas Moran's "Green River, Wyoming" and ending with two early 20th-century works,ceramic magic cube for the medical, a teaser for what comes next.
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