Stories about Alice Walton and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art tend to concentrate on square footage and dollar signs. What the stories haven’t done is explain why Walton, the only daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, chose art as her way to give, not just to northwest Arkansas but also to the entire world.
The explanation turns out to be pretty simple, writes Jan Cottingham in the October issue of Little Rock Soiree:
Walton loves art; she finds it transformative, spiritual. She loves American history, and American art tells the American story. She wants to share these loves.
Her late mother Alice's love of art, the love she passed on to her daughter, has “had a huge impact on me and is one of the real motivations for Crystal Bridges,” Walton said. “I hope that a lot of other mothers and daughters and fathers and sons or daughters can use this facility and this institution to make those connections.”
When asked what she hopes the museum will achieve, she grows expansive. “I want our children and the people in this whole region -- and by region, I’m talking 300-mile radius, within a day’s drive -- to become comfortable and familiar with art and to better learn the history of this country through their experiences at Crystal Bridges. And I particularly want children, schoolchildren, to have the opportunity to experience the art and to relate it to their lessons.”
The museum, scheduled to open Nov.11, occupies a 120-acre park that once belonged to the Walton family and is dedicated to the memory of Helen Walton. The site is adjacent to the house, designed by the late architect Fay Jones, in which the Walton children were raised.
Locating the museum near Bentonville was important, Walton said, because “we wanted the impact to be a positive one for northwest Arkansas.”
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