How Crystal Bridges, an ‘impossible building’, became one of America’s greatest museums

With impeccable art, inimitable architecture and tranquil natural surroundings, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has mastered the recipe for the perfect museum. Its creation reflects the collaboration of two visionaries: philanthropist, arts patron and Arkansas native Alice Walton, who established the non-profit charitable organisation in 2005, and Moshe Safdie, the renowned Israeli-Canadian-American architect behind gravity-defying structures such as Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands hotel and Montreal’s Habitat 67 housing complex.

When siting the future home of Walton’s art collection on the family’s 120-acre estate in downtown Bentonville, Safdie ambitiously proposed digging into and damming the valley to create bodies of water. Since opening in 2011, the resulting visitor experience begins with a spectacular bird’s eye view followed by an elevator procession into the museum, where a sequence of curved bridges and art-filled glass pavilions appear to float on spring-fed ponds. Across the grounds are several trails, punctuated with sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama and Dale Chihuly, as well as a James Turrell ‘Skyspace’ and Frank Lloyd Wright House.

‘Crystal Bridges demonstrates how rich architecture can become when you are really attentive to the site, in the sense that you bring out its potential and unlock its secrets,’ Safdie tells Christie’s, noting that what has made him most proud is the visitors’ reactions. ‘We always call it a “happy” building,’ the Safdie Architects founding partner says. While the team initially planned for 300,000 annual visitors, Crystal Bridges is now averaging about one million. ‘People talk about the impact of the Guggenheim on Bilbao,’ says Safdie referring to the Guggenheim Foundation’s Frank Gehry-designed museum in northern Spain. ‘But perhaps, the impact Crystal Bridges had on Bentonville was even greater.’

About eight years ago after Safdie turned 80, Walton asked the architect to design a master plan for the next 25 years of the campus’s development. ‘Alice said she didn’t want anybody else to fiddle with the building,’ he recalls. ‘When we presented the model, she and the board got so excited and said, “Why do we need to wait 25 years? Let’s build it now!”’

This June, Crystal Bridges, of which Christie’s is a longtime partner, unveiled its 114,000-square-foot expansion, introducing new galleries, education spaces, artist studios, a café, outdoor splash pad and more. Safdie says the difference between constructing the original plan versus the addition was night and day. ‘During phase one, we were pushing the envelope for Bentonville to build a structure of that sophistication. The contractors thought we were asking them to build an impossible building,’ he says. Once there was a precedent, however, trust was solidified making the second phase ‘a love fest.’

That positive energy is pervasive throughout the now 314,000-square-foot museum. ‘I’ve worked in a lot of different museums and compared to the Beaux-Arts architecture [found in many traditional institutions], the weight of the centuries of art history on view does not rest on your shoulders as heavily here,’ says Austen Barron Bailly, the museum’s Deputy Director, Curatorial Affairs. ‘The way you move from galleries into spaces where the outdoors is so visible, it’s liberating architecture.’

New acquisitions and commissions showcase a wider vision of America

In addition to the expansion, the museum reinstalled its entire collection, while also acquiring nearly 150 pieces and commissioning more than 50 works to demonstrate, as Bailly puts, ‘that the story of American art is not just oil paintings in gold frames.’ The museum paid special attention to their craft and Indigenous art holdings. ‘We embrace that there’s no hall for Indigenous art or no craft corner. These areas are fully integrated,’ adds Bailly, noting that the Trail of Tears (the forced displacement of thousands of Indigenous people during the 19th century) traversed Bentonville. Indigenous voices are, therefore, as integral to illustrate national and local history as paintings by Thomas Hart Benton (whose great-great uncle, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, Bentonville is named after), and clear crystal quartz, of which Arkansas is the leading producer in the country.

Kent Monkman, Raven Halfmoon and Nicholas Galanin are amongst the many Indigenous artists represented, as well as Jeffrey Gibson, whose towering sculpture The Enforcer (2024) was first displayed at the 2024 Venice Biennale, where Gibson was the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States in a solo exhibition. Complementing the sculpture is Gibson’s first Sol LeWitt-style wall drawing, which Crystal Bridges commissioned. It was executed by the museum’s team and local artists using 173 paint colours. Additionally featured are textiles works by Melissa Cody and her mother Lola Cody — multi-generational artistic practice and cultural traditions play a major role in the Crystal Bridges collection, whether it’s the Wyeths or the Peales.

Many of these works feature in the Visions of America Galleries, which provide a high-level introduction to five centuries of American art through thematic sections (‘Dreaming’ homes in on artistic imagination, ‘Making Our Mark’ celebrates three-dimensional objects, ‘We the People’ explores national symbols, etc.). With little exception, the rehang prioritised non-chronological organisation in favour of thought-provoking and unexpected juxtapositions (though the museum’s beloved salon-style hangs are still sprinkled throughout).

In the opening section, for example, visitors will find Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter (1943) — considered Crystal Bridges’ Mona Lisa — and Charles Willson Peale’s 18th-century portrait of George Washington in the same breath as Kerry James Marshall’s Our Town (1995) and Teri Greeves’s beaded triptych — her largest work to date — depicting a Kiowa woman who represents the past, present and future of Kiowa sovereignty (the Peale and Marshall are amongst the many important works on view acquired via Christie’s auctions). Other pieces in Visions of America range from a luminous Tiffany Studios window designed by Agnes Northrop and natural specimens to Annie Leibovitz photographs and six portraits of a Jewish colonial family that Walton insisted on acquiring in totality to prevent the rare set from being separated.

Contemporary art that’s not afraid to challenge and provoke

Alejo Benedetti, Crystal Bridges Curator of Contemporary Art, says that the museum continues telling a ‘plurality of stories’ in the new Contemporary American Art Gallery. ‘We try to bring folks into this gallery with something that feels familiar, and then as they walk through, we push them out of their comfort zone a little bit; we’re going to talk about identity and politics, abstraction, even outer space,’ explains Benedetti. ‘The team is very committed to the idea that we, especially as an American art museum, should be engaged with the present realities that we’re all contending with, and that this should be a safe space to have these conversations.’

One of the most provocative sections is called History in Action, featuring a new acquisition by Hank Willis Thomas. Responding to a Danny Lyon photograph from a 1964 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) demonstration, Looking for America (2018) is a bronze and steel sculpture depicting someone being forcefully pulled in different directions by the National Guard troops. Near the work is a series by Patrick Martinez in which he transforms protest signs into neon signs recalling those frequently seen around his native Los Angeles. ‘One of the best things that we can do as an American Art Museum that celebrates the American Spirit is to push and press and question,’ says Benedetti. ‘Today, as we are thinking about the future of this country, protest is equally as important as how we show up as Americans.’

In addition to knockout works by Mark Rothko, Donald Judd, Wayne Thiebaud and Barkley L. Hendricks, visitors to the museum will likely note the sheer volume of women artists, including Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Julie Mehretu, Cecily Brown, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Amy Sherald. Visitors can also step into a Kusama ‘Infinity Room’ in a section about artists searching for their place in the universe, which also includes Isamu Noguchi’s Lunar Landscape (1943), a meditation on the time the artist spent in a Japanese internment camp in Arizona.

The museum’s new 14,000-square-foot, wide-open temporary exhibition gallery offers even more options for displaying contemporary art. Currently on view is Keith Haring in 3D, the first show to focus specifically on the artist’s three-dimensional practice. The sprawling exhibition features everything from mannequins and clothing to record players, cribs and cars, proving no surface was off limits for the pop legend.

Even more contemporary art is on view at The Momentary, a satellite space and music and food venue that the Walton family opened in 2020 in a former Kraft cheese factory. The Momentary often hosts immersive and experimental installations, with past exhibiting artists including Derrick Adams, Beeple, Firelei Báez and Awol Erizku. The Momentary is currently staging Lucy Sparrow’s first U.S. museum exhibition, in which the artist recreates a 1980s-90s Walmart-inspired supermarket whose shelves are stocked with her signature felt product replicas, as well as Chuck Ramirez: Ordinary Wonders, which also explores consumer goods through photography.

Throughout the main museum are spaces reflecting Crystal Bridges’ Art Everywhere program, which commissions artists to transform stairwells, elevators, bathrooms and more. However, you’ll truly find art around every corner of the 134-acre campus, whether it’s in the lobby of the Heartland Whole Health Institute or on the grounds of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine (in addition to art, Walton’s passions include health and medicine). ‘To me, the overall outcome of the expansion is that Crystal Bridges went from being a building to being a village,’ says Safdie. As for the campus’s future? When Walton’s and Safdie’s brains join forces, anything is possible.