Crystal Bridges Construction to Begin Soon

Construction should begin in June on Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, said Bob Workman, executive director of the proposed museum. The facility is slated to be open in 2009.

When announced on May 23, the museum was estimated to be “more than 100,000 SF” and cost $50 million. Workman said updated figures pertaining to size and cost would be announced soon.

Workman said there have been minor changes in the design of the seven-building complex since it was announced. The 250-car parking lot has been relocated “to save a grove of pine trees,” he said. A suspension bridge that will rise 40 feet in the air has also been added.

Workman said space in the museum complex will occasionally be leased for business meetings and corporate retreats.

“We’ll be using it for our own purposes as well as revenue-generating space,” he said.

The museum is the brainchild of Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Sam Walton.

The museum, designed by Boston architect Moshe Safdie and Associates, will be on 100 acres of forestland within a five-minute walking distance of Bentonville’s downtown square.

Workman said the museum will have 17,000 SF of space for permanent exhibits. Last year, Walton paid $35 million for Asher B. Durand’s 1849 painting called “Kindred Spirits.” It will be in the museum’s permanent collection along with paintings by Charles Willson Peale, Charles Bird King, Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell and Winslow Homer.

The facility will also have two 3,500-SF rooms for exhibits on loan from other museums. Those rooms can be used for art that’s not part of the permanent collection, such as photographs and European paintings.

The museum complex will also contain a 3,500-SF library and 250-seat indoor auditorium. The buildings will surround a natural pond and a man-made pond.

The buildings will also incorporate sophisticated engineering design. In the Great Hall, it will be possible to raise and lower the floor, converting the room into a theater (with slanted floor) in about eight minutes.

A cable suspension system will be used in three of the buildings, allowing the walls to lean out at the top.

“It’s very progressive,” Workman said. “It’s been done before, but it’s not off-the-shelf stuff … It’s a very complex set of geometries that create the building.”

Burrow Happold of England is serving as the structural and mechanical engineer. Nabholz Construction Corp. of Rogers and Linbeck Group L.P. of Fort Worth, taxes, are the pre-construction engineers. Linbeck designed The Modern Art Museum and the Amon Carter Museum, both in Fort Worth, as well as the Space Center in Houston.

Planners expect the museum to attract 250,000 visitors each year.

Workman, who was originally project director for the museum, became executive director on Jan. 1. He began his association with Crystal Bridges in December 2003 working as a consultant.

Christopher B. Crosman of Rockland, Maine, was been hired as the museum’s chief curator in December. He began working for the museum in January.

Crossman served as the executive director of the William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, for 17 years until he became director emeritus in 2005.