Crystal Bridges To Lure Tourists

When it opens in late 2009, Bob Workman believes the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art will be a boon to cultural tourism in Bentonville.
The $50 million fine art museum will be the largest of its kind in middle America and Workman, the executive director, hopes to attract 250,000 people to its turnstiles every year.
“We will be a destination venue,” he said.
An economic calculator from the nonprofit Washington D.C. group Americans for the Arts put the total economic impact of the museum — including its ripple effect throughout the community — between $14 million and $17 million per year, Workman said. (To be fair, the calculator includes performing arts, which will not be part of Crystal Bridges, so the impact number may be high, Workman admitted.)
By comparison, the Wal-Mart Visitors Center, located in downtown Bentonville about a quarter-mile stroll from Crystal Bridges, averages only 50,000 visitors per year, said Boo Randolph, manager of the museum.
The 100,000-SF Crystal Bridges museum will sit within 100 wooded acres in Bentonville and include galleries for permanent collections and special exhibits, a public education center with an auditorium, a professional education center with classrooms, walking trails and a central pond.
Workman believes the modern, non-imposing architecture and surrounding gardens, along with the quality of the permanent collection, will help attract patrons and special exhibits on loan from other museums.
Visitors will move from inside to outside and then back inside to get to various galleries.
“There’s nothing wrong with having an art experience as part of a larger outdoor experience,” he said.
The museum is the brainchild of Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Sam Walton. Much of the permanent collection will be anchored by donations from Walton and the Walton Family Foundation.
So far, the collection includes paintings by Charles Wilson Peale, Charles Bird King, Winslow Homer, Norman Rockwell and an 1849 painting called “Kindred Spirits” by Asher B. Durand, which Walton paid $35 million for in 2005.
There will be about 30,000 SF of total gallery space with about 17,000 SF dedicated to the permanent collection.
But the museum’s art will be only one draw, Workman said.
Space in the museum complex will occasionally be leased for business meetings and corporate retreats.
Workman said the hope is that a local patron will visit Crystal Bridges up to three times in any given day: In the morning with their children for some sort of artistic and fun workshop; second, in the afternoon to view the exhibits with an out-of-town friend; and third that night, as a guest at a social event held on the grounds.
“You want it to be integrated into the fabric of everyday lives,” he said.