The story
Crystal Bridges opened in 2011 in Bentonville, Arkansas, the small town that is home to Walmart, and it exists because Alice Walton, heir to that fortune, decided to build a major museum of American art far from the coasts. She funded it lavishly and set it in a wooded ravine, where the architect Moshe Safdie strung pavilions of copper and wood across two spring-fed ponds, the bridges the museum is named for.
The collection buys American history at the top level. It holds one of Gilbert Stuart's portraits of George Washington, Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits, a landmark of the Hudson River School, and Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter, the muscular wartime worker on her lunch break.
Admission to the permanent collection is free, endowed so it stays that way, and trails wind out from the galleries into the Ozark woods, with a Frank Lloyd Wright house that was moved here and rebuilt on the grounds.
