Art is Beauty, with Context
The mission of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is to welcome all to celebrate the American spirit in a setting that unites the power of art with the beauty of nature.
Founded by Alice Walton in 2005, the museum opened in 2011 and is a public, non-profit charitable organization with free admission. Founding endowments through the Walton Family Foundation total $800,000,000, along with the family’s gift of the 120-acre campus and the building designed by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie.
visitors from around the
globe
works of American art in the
permanent collection
total sq. ft. of exhibition space after current
renovations are completed
Art is Beauty,
with Context
The mission of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is to welcome all to celebrate the American spirit in a setting that unites the power of art with the beauty of nature.
Founded by Alice Walton in 2005, the museum opened in 2011 and is a public, non-profit charitable organization with free admission. Founding endowments through the Walton Family Foundation total $800,000,000, along with the family’s gift of the 120-acre campus and the building designed by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie.
12M+
visitors from around the globe
3,500+
works of American art in the permanent collection
100K
sq. ft. of exhibition and education spaces currently being added to the 200K sq. ft. museum.
Creating Access to
Great Art in a Place
of Inspiration
To me, the experiences that people have at the museum are what’s most meaningful. You can see works of art by artists from every walk of life, perhaps find an artwork that speaks to you, that intrigues you. How might that help you look at the world a little differently? A little more empathetically?
Alice
Creating Access to Great Art in a Place of Inspiration
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art was founded by Alice Walton in 2005, and opened its doors to the public in 2011. Nestled on 120 acres of Ozark landscape that once belonged to the Walton family, the 200,000 square-foot museum building was designed by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie.
Crystal Bridges is committed to telling broad and inclusive stories by acquiring and showcasing the highest quality works by artists underrepresented in art history and conventional museum frameworks.
American masters like Asher B. Durand and Georgia O’Keeffe are displayed alongside contemporary artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Maya Lin and Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith, representing a more complete and honest picture of the finest achievements in American art.
Alice gifted her personal art collection to form the basis for the museum collection, which now spans five centuries of American masterworks from early American to current day and is enhanced by temporary exhibitions.
More than 3,500 artworks are now in the museum’s collection. Additionally, an architectural treasure, a rare Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house, was preserved and relocated to the museum grounds in 2015.
Crystal Bridges offers public programs including lectures, performances, classes and teacher development opportunities. Over 300,000 school children from 20 states have participated in the school visit program, which provides educational experiences for school groups at no cost to the schools.
In February 2020, Crystal Bridges opened a satellite contemporary art space in downtown Bentonville called the Momentary. This adaptive reuse project turned a decommissioned cheese factory into a contemporary art space for visual and performing arts, festivals, artists-in-residence, culinary experiences, and more.
