Shop at Wal-mart, Help Ms. Alice Buy more Art for Bentonville.
Putting a world class art museum in Bentonville, Arkansas is wrong. Alice Walton can buy any piece of art she wants and she is determined to move some of the world masterpieces to Bentonville.
Slowly and methodically, Ms. Walton has paid top dollar at auction and through dealers for the best paintings, drawings and sculptures she can find by artists like Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, George Bellows, Marsden Hartley and Charles Willson Peale.
She is certainly determined: her bid for the Durand from the library’s collection outstripped one made jointly by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.
So Ms. Walton is outbidding the MoMa and National Gallery. If they were smart, they would just loan her some of the works they have in storage. There is a finite selection of world class art, to move it to a place where the masses cannot see it is dumb and selfish. Apparently art critics are raising a suitable uproar, as if it will do any good.
Other than an infectious and personal dislike by these writers for Ms. Walton’s approach, the barely hidden implication in their written words is that metropolitan areas like Seattle, Washington, Forth Worth, Texas, and St. Louis, Missouri — places that people will visit — are more natural and deserving destinations for high art for our public American masses outside of New York.
This is elitist nonsense on a major scale.
It’s not elitist, it’s pragmatic. Museums need to be built where the people, especially children, have access to them. Many children visit their first museum as part of a school field trip.
So Lenny Campello is taking up Ms. Walton’s cause.
Bentonville’s next door neighbor, Fayetteville (population around 67,000) is the home to the 420-acre campus of the University of Arkansas (the only comprehensive, doctoral degree-granting institution in the state). Their enrollment has more than 14,600 students (more than 12,000 in undergraduate programs) and a diverse student population with 650 international students representing 86 countries.
Well, as they might say in Bentonville, Whoop-de-doo. Maybe within 150 miles they will have a couple million population? This justifies moving some of the finest art in the world to Arkansas?
It doesn’t take a futurist to predict that this area will see a major urban growth in the next few decades, and when it does, it will be grateful to the vision of Alice Walton, which is perhaps a throwback to that of the moneyed folks who a century earlier built the collections that she now shops from.
Campello argues that this area is underserved when it comes to the arts. Won’t argue with that, but Carnegie had a much better idea when he funded over 2500 libraries across the country. If Ms. Walton or her advisors had some imagination, they could come up with a better way to spend her billions to benefit more people for a longer time.
@Robyn: yes, “rich” people will travel. You made my point: for the huddled masses to see great art, the art needs to be located near the masses. Or easily reachable. NW AR is neither.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point. If someone loves art, they’ll make the journey for a particular piece or artist (don’t people plan trips around concerts and certain big-name performers?). People pursue passion.
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@Robyn: art is for the masses. Sure your kid should be exposed to the best art – but millions and millions of other people will not trek to Bentonville to see the world’s greatest art, it just won’t happen. You chose to live in AR, you give up things – like access to a world-class art museum.
Wow, crazygingi, you are sorely mistaken. I’ve grown up smack in the heart of Bentonville for all of my 29 years, and now I am raising my three children here. This area is expanding, thriving, and I am happy to say, growing more culturally diverse by the day (literally), thanks to Wal-Mart. Is it a booming downtown metropolis? No, certainly not – but that is its charm. I live in an area with literally less than 1% crime. We have acres of woods and pasture, with deer in our backyard, yet we are 15 minutes away from wonderful shopping (not just chains, thanks), restaurants (going more local by the month), and now a wonderful art museum. As I look at homeschooling my oldest (just turning 6), I am finding Crystal Bridges to be a wonderful resource for teaching him, especially with their community programs. Do I need to homeschool him? Absolutely not – Bentonville has the top schools in the state. But I can because of the wonderful resources the town offers.
Here’s what I know, after traveling the state broadly throughout my life: Northwest Arkansas is not like the rest of the state. It is a whole other world, in fact, and those of us who live here and benefit from the prosperity and opportunity brought in by Wal-Mart love it. I am glad to be here, and glad to be raising my children here.
I have to say that I am slightly affronted that one would suggest that my family doesn’t deserve to be close to a world-class art museum. We will learn things we never could have before, and my kids are open to learning. I for one encourage it.
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@crazygingi: Point is that south MO, and north AR are pretty much the same.
I don’t understand the comment “@Crazygingi: Isn’t Branson is AR?”.
I don’t shop at Wal-mart because I don’t support their business practices. Other people should follow suit.
The museum will not attract people to AR. There is just no reason to go there. AR really is one of the worst states to visit. It’s full of chains like Wal-mart and it’s disgusting. I find most people who like to live in AR are “slack-jawed, toothless, inbreds loading up the truck like the Clampetts to visit that there big city”.
@Crazygingi: Isn’t Branson is AR? Well close enough? And Sun City? I’m not sure what your point is, but AR doesn’t need a world class art museum.
AR is exploding with low class rednecks! If you disagree, you’re one of them.
There is a reason people don’t travel here.
Hi,
Glad you commented. I guess my problem with the whole deal is access to world-class art by the greatest number of people possible. If a museum features regional artists, then build it anywhere.
I’m from Rogers, which is between Bentonville and Fayetteville, but now i live in western new york. northwest arkansas is a very fast-growing area, and it’s not at all Hicksville, USA. sadly, it is plagued by cookie-cutter suburbia. i say, better for NWA to get an art museum than another movie theater or Applebees. if the rich want to build a museum, why not let them? as far as i know, the entire southern midwest is suffering from lack of culture.
I don’t know, when I think Arkansas I think Clinton. Slick Willie and his wife, the slick butch lawyeress. (P.S.: I voted for Clinton twice. I also voted for Dubya twice! I must have a fondness for lying sacks of sh**.)
Redneck Diva’s comment made me laugh. It’s true, it would take a lot for most people to travel to Arkansas.
Yes, as far as images, SOME people have that image of a of all states in the mid-south and southeast.
Hmmm…I think too many people have this vision of Arkansas in their heads: slack-jawed, toothless, inbreds loading up the truck like the Clampetts to visit that there big city.
A museum in AR is not going to draw people in from long distances. I fear that people who don’t know Arkansas will think the museum is full of things like the World’s Largest Hay Bale, the Largest Beer Can Collection (with plenty of Old Milwaukee and Schlitz) and the Hall of Presidents Who Almost Got Impeached.
Heh. Actually, it was pointed out to me that it’s Bentonville. So I will make the edit.
Luckily for me, I recently made plans to visit Benton Arkansas. I hear it’s quite the place.
Okay, I’ve never heard of it and I’ll probably never go there unless I get lost and end up there on accident.