In Defense of Crystal Bridges

The storm clouds that still hang precipitously over Fisk University have given the media another opportunity to remind us that some people are offended by Alice Walton's acquisitional tendencies. When Walton offered to buy a half share in the Tennessee university's Stieglitz Collection for $30 million, money that Fisk says it needs to stay afloat, reports of the proposal were invariably accompanied by accounts of her past forays into the commercial, spotlit art world: Remember when she nabbed Asher B. Durand's Kindred Spirits from the New York Public Library?! Or when she tried to buy Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic from Thomas Jefferson University?! (Emphasis on "tried." She was stopped by a coterie of museums and Philadelphians who raised the funds to match her bid.)

All of this was aggregated in a recent Wall Street Journal article by art blogger Lee Rosenbaum titled "The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled By Wal-Mart Heiress." (A similar piece ran in Newsweek in June titled "Why Does Her Money Scare the Art World?") An excerpt from Rosenbaum's piece:

"...some of her most recent maneuvers have positioned her as a hovering culture vulture, poised to swoop down and seize tasty masterpieces from weak hands."

An Arkansas newspaper took Rosenbaum to task, characterizing her as a "snob" who didn't want all of this world-class art going to Bentonville, Arkansas, where Walton's museum is being built, because it is Arkansas — that is to say, not as cosmopolitan or sophisticated (by some accounts) as New York. While their barbs may have been directed at the wrong person — Rosenbaum was ostensibly reporting the facts, not necessarily giving an opinion — their concerns aren't off base.

When Kindred Spirits and The Gross Clinic came up for sale, mass public outcries ensued. New Yorkers whined that Durand's painting of two luminaries in the Catskills was part of their cultural heritage and belonged to them. Philadelphians howled that Eakins' graphic portrait was part of their cultural heritage and belonged to them. But how many of these New Yorkers and Philadelphians even knew the paintings existed before Walton coveted them? And out of those, how many had ever even been to see them?

It's hard to shake the feeling that the uproar was also motivated by an underlying assumption that a museum in Arkansas — in Bentonville, no less, not even the state capital — isn't worthy of American masterpieces. Culture has long been the purview of the big city. But, a first-rate museum in Bentonville, Arkansas is a good thing for the art world. It's likely that more people will see Kindred Spirits and The Gross Clinic at Crystal Bridges than did in either of their previous abodes. There's no question that the Stieglitz Collection would get more exposure — it's currently locked in the basement of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. What's more, the experience of seeing the works will probably be more pleasurable at Crystal Bridges, where there won't be great jostling seas of people like you find in large cities.

It's a good thing for Bentonville, too. A whole new demographic will have the opportunity to see art — really important, exceptional art. It's the same reason why I support the Louvre's deal with the High Museum in Atlanta and its decision to license its name and loan its treasures to Abu Dhabi (so long as there is no censorship). Why should all of the very best pieces be concentrated in a few, select cities at a few, select institutions? Maybe there will even be some sort of "Bilbao effect" in Bentonville, generating more interest in the town.

Walton's not the buyer to be worried about. It's the collectors snapping up iconic work only to ferret it off to some vault.