Crystal Bridges connects at many levels

Editor’s note: This is the second story about the opening of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. The City Wire will post each week for the next several weeks stories about the museum, the art and the artists. Link here for the first story in the series.

story by Ken Kupchick, special to The City Wire

Bridges can be metaphorical.

This one bridges the power and beauty of art with the tranquility and beauty of nature. It also bridges our artist past with the present. It bridges who we once were with who we will be.

It builds societal bridges, too.

The pinstriped now stand along with those in Levi’s while families with newborns in strollers make their way beside families with elderly needing walkers. The art illuminati peer with equal amazement beside Joe the Plumber. Most importantly, it builds a bridge between Arkansas and the rest of the world. It is our backyard, and it is now their destination.

THE ENTRANCE
Guests are immediately greeted to the heavily-forested 120-acre childhood playground of Walmart heiress Alice Walton with a richly landscaped winding drive that is crowned by the 47-foot stainless steel tree. Titled, “Yield,” by Roxy Paine, the commissioned installation greets visitors with an ever changing profile that reflects bursts of sunlight or glowing moonlight from its intricately constructed branching systems. The branches point onlookers toward their destination of newfound worldly significance.

To enter by elevator is to enter with a full understanding of the magnitude of the gift that is Crystal Bridges. It’s commanding. The bridge between nature and art, and the constant back and forth play of hard and soft, tranquil and vibrant, is breathtaking and inspirational. The museum visitor literally descends into an experience, escaping the familiar in exchange for a passage.

The architecture by internationally-praised Moshe Safdie also reflects the duality. It’s vibrant yet tranquil, massive yet intimate, contemplative and expansive, overwhelming yet personal.

While his pavilions create curved armada fortresses meant to protect and secure art, the use of glass, reflective water and light commune art and nature to make the entire experience transparent and resounding. Away from whatever you deal with on a day-to-day basis, you are now sheltered in a safe and harmonious ravine that is breathtaking, astounding, and momentous all in one gaze. And then again, you gaze at details, concepts, and intricacies. There are mammoth, yet gracefully arched, white pine beams.  Supportive and strong, they also frolic and interplay with their reflections in the ponds.  The campus is masterful in how it creates a constant dialogue between nature and art, as well as wood and stone with glass and water. You have just arrived and yet you instantly can’t wait to come back.

CHRONOLOGICAL PASSAGE
What impresses on first visit is the willingness of the museum to go bold and be heritage proud. The art is chronologically presented and helps shape an understanding of time and place; our culture as we transcribed it and our culture as we transformed it.

Inviting sage green and mountain moss hues in the first pavilion introduce visitors to the colonial and early 19th century works. Primarily portraiture and old world in feeling, these gilded and elaborate gold framed work created an immediate audience verve and collective excitement. You are about to put your fingertips on the first pulse of American Art history.

The colonial portraitures by Geradus Duyckinck, circa 1735, begin your art journey. Rich in jewel tones yet stoic in pose, the paintings nod to the formality of the old world in documenting family in place and time.

But as a new heritage takes hold, portraiture moves away from what was familiar to what begins to matter most. On different gallery walls, Charles Wilson Peale’s “George Washington” is juxtaposed by Gilbert Stuart’s somber 1797 portrait of our first president.

A new world beacons and there is a vast and color rich country to discover. Artists are putting sweeping landscapes onto canvas and there becomes a fascination with the call of the wild. Thomas Moran’s “Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn,” painted in 1862, is a befitting example as is Arthur F. Tait’s, “The Life of a Hunter:  A Tight Fix.”

Quite expectedly, the crowd focuses upon Asher B. Durand’s, “Kindred Spirits,” not only because it is the “$35 million dollar shot heard around the art world” but because it offers both of these aspects of unexplored landscape and adventure within the same frame.

Clearly, this first gallery celebrates the birth of the American Spirit.

EUROPEAN INFLUENCES
Leaving the first gallery places you in a short hallway offering a reflective moment before entering the second gallery of late 19th century works. Now, Labrador blue walls and smaller galleries one with a deep rose color called Garrison Red and another with warm and rich Sienna. Articles on the sienna-colored walls are black or charcoal and feature thick black frames. It’s a stunning gallery.

An art deco bronze sculpture commands the principal gallery space along with two brazen larger-than-life turn-of-the-century full figure portraits of Jeanne by Alfred Henry Maurer.

Artworks now show a return to European influence with heavily impressionism. There are many well-respected composition artists like Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent. Haystack by Martin Johnson Heade is a prime example.  As in the previous gallery, several pieces are from the personal collection of Alice Walton, such as the bold vertical piece, “Hollyhocks,” by John La Farge, as is the Heade work — and from what I understand, one of Ms. Walton’s favorite pieces in the collection.

The visitor gains a sense that American artists want to step away from convention. The American Spirit is both borrowing and also blazing new trails in art.

A stairway to a lower level permits access to classrooms and pond level access to the facility where outdoor functions will be held. The break allows a return to the main lobby, if you so desire.

MODERN BRIDGES
The stairwell also serves as a gateway to the first of the spectacular bridges. By day, the bridge gives view to the natural beauty of the acreage as well as some strategically appointed outdoor works, such as 2010 National Medal of Arts awarded Mark Di Suvero’s Lowell’s “Ocean 2005-2008.” This massive 26,000 pound work permits viewing from several perspectives.  By night, the glass, lights, reflections of arches and rooflines, serve to create crashing waves of design and structure, as does the art it holds. It is astounding.

Two galleries, one dressed in a mineral alloy blue and one painted in “Oklahoma wheat” bring experimentation with Cubism and abstraction, and political expressiveness and social commentary into the American Art scene of the first half of the 20th century.

Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1943 painting, “Rosie the Riveter,” rocks the glass palace. Witness to the distinctive Rockwell signature is chilling enough, until Rosie reveals her strength, attitude and conviction. Here, we realize newfound power through art. Artists have something to say and are boldly saying it. Jacob Lawrence and Thomas Hart Benton are in the house. Befittingly and almost at the end of the bridge, Jim Dine’s oddly whimsical Pinocchio-like sculpture, “Walking to Boras,” ushers us towards American Pop Art and our contemporary masters in the final pavilion of the permanent collection.

EXPLODING WORKS
After a brief reflecting room, complete with comfortable chairs and art books, we enter a concrete like environment painted in La Paloma grey. Art is now to be seized. It’s stunning; it’s visual, it’s simple and it’s confusing. Everything familiar is to be questioned in a boundary free art world of surprise and invention. Roy Lichtentstein, Robert Rauchenberg, Warhol, Jasper Johns and the like.

Equally impressive, Janet Sobel, who is perhaps the forbearer of many drip-styled works, as well as Jenny Holzer, and Joan Mitchell. Women artists figure prominently in this room of giants. Smaller gallery spaces introduce us to two Andrew Wyeth’s and two Carroll Cloar works, one in particular, “The Baptism of Charlie Mae,” is particularly noteworthy. Cloar is an Arkansas artist and his nephew lives in Fort Smith.

The duality to be found now is that the works are exploding, ironically like Lichenstein’s “Standing Explosion,” while the onlookers are now much more relaxed. Are they now comfortable in a museum setting, or has the sheer magnitude of this undertaking overwhelmed them? I think it’s the former as there is such powerful work to behold.
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I am drawn to the Adolph Gottleib’s 1962 work, “Trinity.” How could I not, as its dimensions are 15.5 feet by almost 7 feet?

Another “huge” favorite is “Our Town” by Kerry James Marshall. We are seeing new mediums, new messages, while the works are far from the outrageously avant-garde, they are eclectic. American artists need not look elsewhere for inspiration. They now lead rather than follow.

ELEVATED ART
The museum shows its dare more in its temporary exhibition space with “Wonder Worlds.” Making great use of this large space, the exhibit demonstrates the power of a strong curatorial staff. So much so, that we’ll leave the discussion for another time … much like the three miles of walking trails, the amazing outdoor sculptures on the grounds, the blow-your-mind absolutely-must-see James Turrell Skyscape installation, and the planning for lectures and education programs to introduce a new generation to world class art.

Besides, it’s now in our backyard.

Crystal Bridges is not a pilgrimage. It’s not an item on a bucket list to click off; it’s a new way of living, communing, relating and being. The final duality to leave you with is that by descending into the ravine to witness the art, we are elevated as we leave.