No Guns in This Gallery

You may have missed it, but USA Today was the latest national media outlet to dispatch a reporter to Benton County to see what all the fuss is about in Bentonville.

Reporter Jayne Clark provided readers with her interpretation in an article called, “Wal-Mart’s hometown: Mayberry goes Manhattan.”

The piece appeared in the newspaper’s June 28 edition, describing, among other things, how the “Bilbao of the Ozarks” — Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, of course — is helping transform tiny Bentonville into an art lover’s mecca.

Because it’s the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and a couple of other big companies, Clark wrote an influx of residents already had been reshaping the town over the past decade or so.

The arrival of an architecturally stunning museum filled with important artwork accelerated that change.

“You can’t swing a bat without hitting a Harvard MBA,” said Dayton Castleman, an Art Institute of Chicago grad who now lives in Bentonville as the museum director of the new 21c Museum Hotel.

That was one of two money quotes collected by Clark.

A 26-year-old car rental clerk named Cave Bumstead offered the other.

Bumstead told the reporter he thought Crystal Bridges will give outsiders a reason to come to town, but he had no plans to visit.

“Maybe if they put a shooting range in there,” he said.

Well done, Mr. Bumstead. You probably cemented the Ozark stereotype to a mass audience for another 20 years.