Crystal Bridges

While in Fayetteville last weekend, we made another visit to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. It had been a few years since our last visit, and there have been a few changes to the museum. One of the biggest is the addition of the Bachman-Wilson House, which was designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1954. The house originally stood by the Millstone River in New Jersey, but the house was under threat of flooding from the river and was put up for sale under the conditions that the new owners would move the house to safer ground. Crystal Bridges purchased the house, and carefully deconstructed it and moved it over 1,200 miles to its new home. It was reconstructed and made open for tours. We visited, but we had a restless toddler with us who was not interested in the detailed intricacies of the architecture so I missed some of the finer details of the home.



The museum opened in 2011, with eight linked pavilions that straddle two creek-fed ponds.



The museum contains seven galleries, a library with over 60,000 items, art studios, a museum store, a gathering hall used for lectures and films, and also a restaurant named Eleven (which was apparently not named after the character from Stranger Things).













And one last shot, from the Modern Art section. This is a new piece called Some/One by Korean artist, Do Ho Suh. The sculpture is made up of thousands of military dog tags arranged as a mixture of a robe and body armor. It was a popular piece, and it was hard to get a shot of it without anyone around it.



Crystal Bridges is a great museum, but my one criticism of it remains valid. There is hardly any photography on display there, which is a shame since photography is one of the most significant branches of art to have appeared in the last few centuries. If anyone from Crystal Bridges is reading this, I'd be happy to mention that all of my photos are for sale if they need any new additions to their galleries!