In the Arts: New Arkansas Museum Shows Broad Scope and Big Ambitions
October 4, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, set to open next month in Bentonville, Ark., has embraced both the classical and the contemporary in its effort to establish itself and its community as a major cultural hub, The Washington Post writes in a preview and assessment of the new facility.
Philip Kennicott, the newspaper’s art critic, says Crystal Bridges, built on the Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton’s collection and financed by the Walton family fortune, “is doing everything right, by the standards of contemporary museum practice,” showcasing both the traditional and the provocative ends of American art, offering free admission, and developing serious scholarly and education programs.
The museum “intends to be taken seriously well beyond northwest Arkansas” and transcend the “reflexive condescension” generated by its corporate origins and location in the heart of Middle America, he writes.
In other arts news:
• The philanthropist Beverley Taylor Sorenson is among the recipients of the 2011 National Arts Awards given by advocacy group Americans for the Arts, writes the Associated Press.
Ms. Sorenson was honored for creating an arts-education program for students in her home state of Utah.
• The Art Newspaper traces the nearly decade-long development of the blockbuster Los Angeles arts project Pacific Standard Time and the Getty Foundation’s key role in mounting it.
The foundation awarded more than $10-million in grants to make possible the six-month, 60-venue program of exhibitions and performances devoted to postwar Southern California art.
The project, which the article calls unprecedented for a U.S. city in its scope and level of collaboration among art spaces, began as a Getty research project to archive the city’s cultural history.
