Heartland Whole Health Institute opens on Crystal Bridges campus

Fayetteville architect Marlon Blackwell thought outside the box when designing the Heartland Whole Health Institute. Blackwell said he was out of his comfort zone on this project, his firm’s first building with a curve.

Early in the project, he said Alice Walton, founder of Heartland Whole Health Institute, told him she disliked boxes.

On Thursday (May 1), more than 200 area leaders and members of the media attended the opening ceremony for the Heartland Whole Health Institute in Bentonville. The three-story, 85,000-square-foot building at 850 Museum Way is on the 134-acre campus that includes Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

“This building is all about the Ozarks and our culture and where we live,” Walton said. “I’ve never seen a building come to life as such a perfect mirror of a community and a region — from the pecan ceilings to the giraffe stone outside. We have a house on our family property made of that giraffe stone. … I just can’t tell you enough how much I love this building.”

Walton said her longtime dream has been to connect art and wellness “because art is really all about the wellness of a community. And wellness and health care need art as its soul and heart.” The institute’s opening is the “first piece” of her dream. The campus “will bring together art, nature, education, health care, architecture and wellness.”

Marlon Blackwell Architects designed the institute’s building, and Baldwin & Shell Construction Co. was the general contractor. In November 2021, Bentonville issued a $16.55 million building permit for the property.

“This project embodies the core elements of whole health,” Blackwell said. “It’s surrounded by nature and shaped by nature, with trails that invite exploration and discovery and a design to bring people together to learn, to engage, and to connect.”

Blackwell started working on the project more than five years ago. After the firm was selected to design it, Blackwell met with Walton to discuss the conceptual design. She said she likes his concepts but not boxes. Walton recognized that the design “was in dissidence with the Crystal Bridges campus,” he said. “She was seeking resonance. So we began to think about how nature could more directly shape things, the ravine, develop this beautiful sense of flow to the form and to the spaces.”

Through multiple iterations and collaboration, the design was completed and built.

“This building is more than a structure,” Blackwell said. “As Alice has said, it is an experience. It embodies the values of connection, care and community. If you take a moment to look around you at the walls, the light, the spaces that invite us all to pause and reflect, this is what we have accomplished together, and it is a gift to this community and a reflection of what thoughtful design, collaboration can … achieve to support the beautiful intersection of art, nature, architecture and wellness.”

A media tour led by Blackwell followed the opening ceremony. The tour ended in the meditation room on the second floor, which will be open to the public. The parts of the building closed to the public comprise offices for some of the operating nonprofits founded by Walton, including Art and Wellness Enterprises, Art Bridges Foundation, and Alice L. Walton Foundation. About 150 staff work there. Claude Pirtle leads the institute.

“I want everybody to come and see this,” Walton said. “I want people, when they come to Crystal Bridges, come on up the hill. … We will always have exhibitions going here as well. This area will always be open to the public, and the exhibitions here will focus on art and healing, and the integration of those things.”

“The Art of Whole Health,” the inaugural exhibition at Heartland Whole Health Institute, includes more than 30 works of art, including digital art. The building also has a café and a conference and events center that seats 750 people.

The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine will open in July. It’s under construction on the Crystal Bridges campus.