C Magazine | 2015 Volume 4 | Issue 3 by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

CRYSTAL BRIDGES MEMBER MAGAZINE

DECEMBER 2015

VOL IV ISSUE III

FRONT COVER: Lawren Stewart Harris, Grounded Icebergs (detail), ca. 1931, oil on canvas. Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, gift from the Estate of R. Fraser Elliott, 2005, 2005/156. © Estate of Lawren Harris.

FOUNDING ENDOWMENTS

N E X T G E N E R AT I O N F U N D

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G LO B A L I N I T I AT I V E F U N D Chuck and Terri Erwin Reed and Mary Ann Greenwood

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SPONSORS Windgate Charitable Foundation

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Harlan and Kathy Crow ConAgra Foods Greenwood Gearhart Inc. The Gordon and Llura Gund Foundation The Harrison and Rhonda French Family William M. Fuller Foundation General Mills Greg Thompson Fine Art Meza Harris The Hershey Company Charles and Shannon Holley inVeritas KIND Healthy Snacks Randy and Valorie Lawson/ Lawco Energy Group Lifetime Brands

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RopeSwing Andrew and Denise Saul The Mark and Diane Simmons Charitable Fund Stephen and Claudia Strange Tartaglino-Richards Family Foundation Demara Titzer TravelHost NWA The John and Nicole Weeldreyer Family Fund Wright Lindsey Jennings

DECEMBER 2015

VOL IV ISSUE III

THE BIG PICTURE

LANDSCAPES OF THE MIND

Landscapes of the Americas in Context

Reconsidering Rothko's 210/211 (Orange)

AN INTERVIEW WITH BO BARTLETT

28 C MAGAZINE IS THE MEMBERSHIP PUBLICATION FOR CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART.

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DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

CRYSTAL BRIDGES MEMBER MAGAZINE

NEWS

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

ACQUISITIONS

ELEVEN

KIDS

MUSEUM STORE

ART 101

THE VAULT

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT

COMING SOON

EDUCATION

TRAILS & GROUNDS

LIBRARY

BACK STORY

CELEBRATIONS

PHILANTHROPY

LAST WORD 01

AS THE YEAR WINDS DOWN,THE WORD THAT COMES TO MIND FOR CRYSTAL BRIDGES IS

“WINNING!” The Museum has garnered a great deal of recognition lately in the form of awards, grants, and partnerships. There are many new projects in the works, and we will be sharing them with you in the months ahead. We are very excited about the new year! One of the awards we are most proud of, understandably, is the Gold Award for C magazine from

the Southeastern Museums Conference. It’s a great feeling to receive this sort of recognition from our peers in the museum world. Crystal Bridges has a great team who work together to make this publication as interesting and relevant as possible for our Members. Staff from several departments, including our expert curators, prepare articles for you, and our Creative Team creates the engaging layouts, always looking for ways to make the stories pop off the page!

MEMBER MAGAZINE

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Rod Bigelow DEPUTY DIRECTOR

Sandy Edwards CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER

Jill Wagar DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Diane Carroll

I want to thank each of you who responded to our fall survey regarding this publication. We will be taking your ideas and concerns to heart as we decide what changes we’ll employ for our fifth year of the magazine, the first issue of which will publish this spring. You will see some exciting fresh content and fresh designs!

EDITOR

Linda DeBerry CREATIVE SERVICES MANAGER

Anna Vernon LEAD DESIGNER

Laura Hicklin DESIGNER

Erick Dominquez

Thanks for making Crystal Bridges part of your year, and for coming along with us to discover a bright new 2016! EDITOR Linda DeBerry

CONTRIBUTORS

Chad Alligood Mindy Besaw Rod Bigelow Alison Demorotski Case Dighero Janelle Redlaczyk Valerie Sallis Manuela Well-Off-Man Kelly Hale Zega EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Alison Nation PHOTOGRAPHY

Marc Henning Stephen Ironside Nancy Nolan Dero Sanford MEMBERSHIP & DEVELOPMENT

Ana Aguayo Robyn Alley Emily Ironside Anne Jackson Kaylin McLoud Megan Martin Hannah Nestor Kelly Hale Zega Meg Skaggs Angela Hodges

Do we have your email address? If you’re not getting special announcements, event reminders, and our eNewsletter, then the answer is no.

Don’t miss a thing. Send your email address to embership@crystalbridges.org Environmentally friendly 100% Recycled (post-consumer waste) Made with renewable energy Acid Free

NOW OPEN THURSDAY NIGHTS! Thursday is the new Friday at Crystal Bridges and Eleven! The Museum and restaurant are now open until 9 p.m. on Thursday evenings. So gather your friends and family and get a head start on the weekend with a delicious dinner of High South Cuisine and a stroll through the galleries.

N E W S 03

MUSEUM COLLABORATIVE RECEIVES GRANT TO FURTHER LINKED OPEN DATA PROJECT In our last issue, we mentioned that Crystal Bridges is part of the American Art Collaborative (AAC), a consortium of 14 museums around the country working together to develop a Linked Open Data (LOD) network of information from our respective collections. The planning phase of this project, funded by a grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, is now complete. The Collaborative has recently received a Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Studies to take the next step: the publication of a rich cache of images and information related to American art from the collections of the 14 participating museums: a total of some 70,000 records, all of which will be interconnected, cross-referenced, and searchable via the LOD network. Once the information is formatted and published, Crystal Bridges will convene an Applications Summit that will bring together AAC members, educators, and technical experts to begin planning for the next phase, which will include the development of applications that will draw upon the published data for use in education and research worldwide. LEARN MORE ABOUT LOD ON THE CRYSTAL BRIDGES BLOG! CRYSTALBRIDGES.ORG/BLOG

AWARDS, AWARDS, AWARDS! This fall, Crystal Bridges received no fewer than 12 awards from the Southeastern Museums Conference.

The Alfred Stieglitz Collection, which is co-owned by Crystal Bridges and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, has now completed its two-year stay at Crystal Bridges and returns to Fisk University. The works will be installed in a renovated gallery space for the next two years, where they will be available for viewing and study by Fisk University students. The collection, which includes 101 objects from the collection of photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, will return to Crystal Bridges early in 2018. The entire collection can be viewed online at StieglitzCollection.CrystalBridges.org.

TWO MILLION AND YOU In September Crystal Bridges welcomed our two-millionth guest! To celebrate, we invited guests to join in a “Two Million and You” Instagram campaign, and made cards available on which guests could write about their favorite artworks or best memories of Crystal Bridges.

Dero Sanford

The State of the Art exhibition in particular garnered nine awards, including Excellence in Exhibitions, Best of Show for publications, and Gold awards for the exhibition’s catalog, overall campaign, digital campaign, and website. The State of the Art app and digital labels received Bronze awards. In addition to these, the Museum received Gold awards for C magazine and our Inside brochure; and Silver awards in the publications category for Eleven’s CR(EAT)E Food Series guide and the invitations for the State of the Art Summit. The State of the Art catalog also received an Honorable Mention in the American Alliance of Museums annual Publications Design Competition.

STIEGLITZ COLLECTION RETURNS TO FISK UNIVERSITY

DESIGN STUDENTS NAVIGATE NEVELSON

The students began their investigation of the work with a series of 4-by-4-inch studies that recorded oppositions observed in the sculpture, such as deep versus shallow or static versus dynamic. They then used one of their studies to generate a pattern of their own. The students translated their patterns into individual layers, which they cut from wood using a laser cutter and then reassembled into new compositions. Next, the students built a digital version of Night Zag Wall using three-dimensional modeling software, and then disassembled the model and reassembled it into new configurations that revealed ordering systems like grid, field, centric, radial, linear, pinwheel and serial progression. The resulting works were shown in an exhibition titled Navigating Nevelson, which was shown at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and at Indiana University Center for Art and Design, in Columbus, Indiana.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? DONATION OF CELL SERVICE Over the past three years, Verizon Wireless has established a valuable partnership with Crystal Bridges that has helped the Museum achieve the necessary 4G LTE cellular data connectivity

NEW TYSON SCHOLARS ANNOUNCED A new group of Tyson Scholars was chosen this summer for the 2015-2016 residency year. The Tyson Scholars Program grants awards for scholars and students to pursue research at the Museum, including pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships.

Amy Torbert is a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Delaware. Her dissertation studies the business of publishing prints in England and America from 1750 to 1840 and how representations of American rebellious acts in print shaped changing conceptions of nationhood. Susanneh Bieber focuses on modern and contemporary American art in an international context. Before completing her PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin, she worked as curator at the

that has been needed since the Museum construction began. Verizon Wireless's gift of a MobileAccess VE wireless system and a dedicated 4G LTE system has made a significant impact toward keeping Crystal Bridges a welcoming, inviting, and engaging place to visit.

Tate Modern in London and the Fresno Metropolitan Museum in California. Bieber will use her fellowship time to work on a second book that focuses on American Regionalism in art, architecture, and urban planning.

Corey Piper is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Virginia. His dissertation project traces the ways in which representations of hunting functioned across diverse areas of nineteenth-century life, and examines how such imagery structured humans’ relationship to the natural world and furthered a range of political and social ideals.

Leslie Reinhardt holds a PhD from Princeton University. She will be working on a manuscript adaptation of her dissertation, which will focus on the work of John Singleton Copley. The study will offer close analysis of dresses in images, which often yield specific evidence of how an artist worked, the sources and models he used. Reinhardt currently teaches Art History at George Washington University.

TOP LEFT: Louise Nevelson, Night Zag Wall, 1969-1974, painted wood, 108 x 144 x 10 1/2 in. © 2015 Estate of Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo courtesy Sotheby's. BOTTOM LEFT & RIGHT: Navigating Nevelson event images provided by Tony Vasquez of Vasquez Photography.

Louise Nevelson’s Night Zag Wall, part of Crystal Bridges’ permanent collection, was the subject of projects by first-year design students in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas that helped them gain an understanding of composition, ordering systems, and opposition.

JOHN & PAT CZUBA How has Crystal Bridges impacted you and your family? The region as a whole?

For us it has been an integral part of what we do. We try to attend each of the Family Sunday events and bring our grandchildren. We are volunteers, as well, so that allows us to share the Museum with our guests in a different way. I feel that our community benefits not only from the economic impact the Museum has, but the cultural aspect of what it has brought to the area. People from all over the world now know Bentonville in a very positive way.

What Member benefits do you most enjoy? The lectures are a great Member benefit. We have had the opportunity to hear from scholars of art, public figures, and artists themselves at little to no cost. And each of these speakers came to us—we did not have to travel to seek them out.

People from all over the world now know Bentonville in a very positive way. Why do you feel art is important—for individuals, families, communities?

Art allows for expression without being judgmental. When we are looking at the same painting—for example, O’Keeffe’s The Radiator Building, Night, New York—we will each notice different shapes and colors. However, neither view is wrong or incorrect. It encourages us to develop a sense of individualism and express ourselves through a meaningful dialog. Developing this understanding can then extend beyond ourselves and family to our social and professional experiences.

Stephen Ironside

Do you have a particular story or memory you would like to share about your experience at Crystal Bridges?

One of our granddaughters loves to visit Crystal Bridges with us. When she went for her annual school physical last year, the doctor asked her about her favorite activities—she responded “visiting Crystal Bridges.” She was 7 at the time. It is great to see the impact this experience has had on our life and our relationship with her.

SILVER UPPER WHITE RIVER Maya Lin first gained fame for her winning design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, while she was still an architecture student. Today, her art focuses on humanity’s interaction with nature, underlining a collective responsibility to protect and preserve the world. Lin’s interest in environmental issues, background in architecture, and the regional connection of this sculpture fit well with Crystal Bridges and its emphasis on art, architecture, and nature. Silver Upper White River is now on view in the Museum’s north gallery bridge. The wallmounted sculpture, made from recycled silver, is visible from the Museum’s restaurant, Eleven. The commissioned work represents a birds-eye view of a nearby section of this major waterway running 722 miles through Arkansas and Missouri. Beaver Lake, a manmade reservoir on the White River

about 20 miles east of Crystal Bridges, serves as the source for drinking water in much of Northwest Arkansas. Visitors can find the shape of Beaver Lake on the far left of the sculpture. The artist chose the medium—recycled silver—because Europeans arriving in the Americas noted that there were so many fish in the streams that the reflections off their backs gave rise to the term “running silver.” The work invites viewers to rise above eye level to see the landscape at large and consider the interconnectedness and interdependence of the land, the people, and the biome. The Silver Upper White River is part of a series of river sculptures Lin completed, including the Yangtze River in China; the Missouri River, commissioned by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; and the Colorado River, on view in the Aria resort in Las Vegas, NV, among others.

Maya Lin, Silver Upper White River, 2015, recycled silver, 131 in. × 20ft. × 3/8 in. Photography by Dero Sanford.

A C Q U I S I T I O N S 06

MAYA LIN

LEFT: Faith Ringgold, Maya's Quilt of Life, 1989, acrylic on canvas and painted, dyed, and pieced fabrics. 73 × 73 in. Photo courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries. RIGHT: James McNeill Whistler, The Chelsea Girl, 1884, oil on canvas, 65 × 35 in.

FAITH RINGGOLD

MAYA’S QUILT OF LIFE Faith Ringgold, a leading painter, activist, and educator since the 1960s, broke important ground for women and artists of color and is best known for her painted story quilts. Oprah Winfrey commissioned Maya’s Quilt of Life in honor of Maya Angelou’s birthday in 1989. It is a quintessential Ringgold story quilt, incorporating painting, quiltmaking, and text to produce a brilliant work that melds high art with craft and visual art with storytelling. In the central panel, the artist painted a confident young woman, dressed in Angelou’s signature dress and head scarf, walking down a wooded path. Excerpts from some of the author’s best-known books frame the central panel. In addition to adding an important artist to the collection, this work of art resonates locally. Angelou spent much of her childhood living with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya’s Quilt of Life also connects to a long tradition of quilt-making in the Ozarks. At Crystal Bridges, Ringgold’s quilt joins work by other influential African American female artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Alma Thomas, and Kara Walker, and expands the variety of ways narrative appears in American art.

JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER

THE CHELSEA GIRL The Chelsea Girl, one of James McNeill Whistler’s finest portraits, was painted in 1884. The work features a young London streetseller. She stands with her feet apart and pierces the viewer with a direct and unintimidated gaze. The work exhibits a spareness of detail—the girl’s hands, for example, are little more than a few quick strokes—and the dark background is so thin in places it almost seems unfinished. Yet the artist exhibited the work at the 1893 Columbian Exhibition at Chicago, so it may have been meant to show off his skill. “Whistler uses virtuoso painting to reflect this young girl’s incredible grit,” said Director of Curatorial Affairs Margi Conrads. “Different portions of the girls’ outfit show Whistler’s facility with a paintbrush.” The work illustrates Whistler’s profound impact on a generation of younger artists. “Works like Robert Henri’s Jessica Penn in Black with White Plumes could not have been painted if Whistler did not exist,” Conrads explained.

FLORIDA MEXICANA Alfredo Ramos Martínez was born in Mexico, and was trained, as were many artists of his time, in Paris, where he was exposed to European avant-garde artists such as Gauguin, Cezanne, and Picasso. He moved to Los Angeles in 1929, but continued to acknowledge his Mexican heritage in works such as this one. Florida Mexicana is the first major painting by a Latino artist to join Crystal Bridges’ collection. It features an Indigenous Mexican woman, who holds a basket overflowing with a virtual hothouse of flowers, celebrating the strength and dignity of the Mexican people and referencing the beauty and abundance of the artist’s homeland. The painting also shows the influence of Martínez’s Modernist education in Europe. “Florida Mexicana offers a synthesis of styles from every part of Ramos Martínez’s work and vibrates between being a still life painting, a figure painting, and a landscape painting,” said Margi Conrads, Director of Curatorial Affairs. “The woman is created from a very simplified form, suggesting ancient Indigenous models, yet she’s modern at the same time. The flowers look as if they are carved. They are sculptural in form, as is the figure of the woman. And she’s placed against a landscape that you understand as illusionistic, but also reads as a flat abstraction. That play between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional is a very modern form.” Painted at the height of the Great Depression, this painting is contemporary with the work of other American artists of the 1930s in Crystal Bridges’ collection, such as Thomas Hart Benton and Stuart Davis.

JOAN BROWN

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH FISH AND CAT Self-Portrait with Fish and Cat is the first self-portrait by a woman to join the Crystal Bridges collection. A second-generation Bay Area figurative artist, Brown attended the California School of Fine Arts. There she met her mentor, Elmer Bischoff, one of the first generation of Bay Area figurative painters who inspired a range of younger artists, including Wayne Thiebaud, whose Supine Woman graces the Crystal Bridges collection. Brown’s self-portraits often feature symbolic figures of animals. For her, these represented “the connection and psychic response that the animal picks up from the person.”

LEFT: Alfredo Ramos Martínez, Florida Mexicana, ca. 1936, oil on canvas. 36 × 30 in. Photography by Edward C Robison III. RIGHT: Joan Brown, Self-Portrait with Fish and Cat, 1970, oil enamel on board, 96 × 48 in. Photography by Edward C. Robison III.

A C Q U I S I T I O N S 08

ALFREDO RAMOS MARTÍNEZ

In January, join us for a WOW event we’re calling “The Scoop” featuring little-known insights and anecdotes about American artists in Crystal Bridges’ collection and the regional cuisine of their time. Next, February WOW will delve into the nuances of Samuel F. B. Morse’s masterwork, Gallery of the Louvre, followed in March by a WOW focusing on The Open Road exhibition, opening in February.

An all-new CR(EAT)E Food Series dinner, hosted by Chef Bill Lyle on March 27, will feature a multi-course dinner that is also inspired by The Open Road exhibition, with insights from Museum curators along the way.

E L E V E N 09

The foods we eat offer insights into our culture, including the art we create and enjoy. At Wednesday Over Water (WOW) and the CR(EAT)E Food Series, we use food as a means to create new experiences, reflect on history, and ultimately send you home feeling fulfilled: from your brain, to your heart, to your stomach.

Finally, as a museum that was founded by a woman, we’re excited to announce a new program in the spring that will feature the contributions of women in both the art and culinary worlds. We’re still finalizing plans for the first quarter, but our guests can expect this program to feature the same dynamic style that has made both WOW and the CR(EAT)E Food Series so successful. Cheers! CULINARY DIRECTOR Case Dighero

TEMPT YOUR PALLETTE IN 2016

Dero Sanford

BLUEBERRYCHERRY JAM 3c 1c 4c 2 tbsp 1/4 c 1 package

crushed blueberries crushed, pitted cherries sugar fresh lemon juice Gran Marnier Fruit Jell pectin

Wash and sterilize your canning jars and lids. (You will need about 6 8 oz. jars.) Wash your blueberries and cherries; crush them with a wooden spoon. Measure them into a large pan for cooking. Add the lemon juice. Gradually stir in the pectin. Bring to a full boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Dump all of the sugar in, stirring until dissolved. When it comes back to a full, rolling boil, stir in the Grand Marnier. Boil for one minute. Remove from heat. Skim off foam if necessary. Take the jars out of the

hot water one at a time. Ladle the hot jam into the jar leaving 1/4 inch of space. Wipe the rim down with a clean, damp cloth. Then add the lid and the screw-ring, tighten down to the point of resistance. Place each jar in the canner full of boiling water. Water should cover jars by 1 - 2 inches. Process for 10 minutes. Remove jars from canner and set on a clean towel. Make sure that the jars are sealed. If not, refrigerate immediately. Store jars in a cool, dark place.

K I D S 10

WINTER LANDSCAPES Our current exhibition, Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic, will take you on a fantastic expedition across the Americas. The exhibition includes a number of paintings featuring snow and cold weather, and might inspire you to try painting a winter landscape. Visit the Museum for Winter Break Wonders during your school holiday and enjoy lots of fun activities for your family—including winter landscape painting! Here are some fun techniques you can try at home: PUBLIC PROGRAMS MANAGER Janelle Redlaczyk

Try printing snowflakes on your landscape with white paint. There are many things you can use to add snow to your scene: dip a pencil, cotton swab, or even your finger into the paint, then add dots of white to your painting. Or bend pipe cleaners into snowflake shapes and print with them.

Dero Sanford

To get a sparkly snow effect, paint a large area of heavy paper with dark watercolor like blue, black, and purple. Sprinkle the wet paint with coarse salt. Let the paint dry completely, then brush off the salt.

Try resist painting by using a white crayon to draw the “snowy” parts of your scene on white paper: like snow-covered tree branches, snow on the ground, or mountaintops with snowflakes falling. Paint over the drawing with watercolors, and your snowy scene will emerge like magic!

MAGAZINE RACK

In this spalted sycamore magazine rack, Williams has incorporated the unique geometric design featured in the Bachman-Wilson Houseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pierced-wood clerestory windows.

INSPIRED BY

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S BACHMAN-WILSON HOUSE

M U S E U M S T O R E 11

HANDMADE GIFTS In celebration of the opening of the Bachman-Wilson House on the Museum grounds, the Crystal Bridges Museum Store is pleased to offer these unique, handmade gifts. Crafted by artisan and Crystal Bridges volunteer Myron Williams, using wood harvested during the construction of the Museum, these special items were inspired by the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright.

KEEPSAKE BOXES

These unique keepsake boxes are made from a variety of woods, including spalted sycamore. In a few cases, scraps of Philippine mahogany salvaged from the BachmanWilson House reconstruction have been incorporated.

Dero Sanford

READ ABOUT MYRON WILLIAMS AND SEE PICTURES OF HIS WOODSHOP ON THE CRYSTAL BRIDGES BLOG! CRYSTALBRIDGES.ORG/BLOG

Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic gives Crystal Bridges’ guests a broader, more comprehensive view of what “American” landscape is all about. The exhibition includes works by artists from Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Uruguay, Argentina,

“We bring together very familiar works that have had an iconic status into conversation with equally iconic paintings from different parts of the hemisphere,” said Georgiana Uhlyarik, Associate Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada, and one of the three curators of the exhibition. “We are interested in how the landscape painting tradition developed, and was to some degree transformed, in different places across the Americas.”

and Brazil, among others, all created during a 100-year period from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. This bigpicture approach to the genre is meant to make viewers pause and consider what it means to be “American” in the most-expansive sense of the word. 12

“I think the importance of looking at the Western Hemisphere as a whole is a step toward understanding our shared experiences as societies that evolved from colonies established by European nations,“ said Peter John Brownlee, Curator at the Terra Foundation for American Art and co-curator for the exhibition. “Part of that is coming to this place from all the various other

Frederic Edwin Church, Cotopaxi, 1855, oil on canvas, 30 × 46 7/16 in. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by the Hogg Brothers Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg, by exchange.

The Big

Picture Landscapes of the Americas in Context

EDITOR Linda DeBerry

countries. That kind of cultural mix—of European settlers, as well as Indigenous peoples and African slaves—begins to speak to the uniqueness of the Americas.”

Common Roots The fact that some of the early landscapes bear a surprising similarity in style stems from the fact that the first artist/ explorers were not themselves colonists, but rather Europeans on extended expeditions of discovery. Each of these artists brought with them their European academic “toolbox” of longstanding traditions in painting.

painters who established the pictorial syntax of how to build a landscape composition,” said Brownlee. “Those techniques were codified in discourses of the ‘picturesque, the beautiful, and the sublime’ during the late eighteenth century, which informed everything from landscape gardening to landscape tourism and painting.” One explorer in particular had a powerful influence on painters of the nineteenth century: Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who explored and documented areas of South America from 1799 to 1804, and wrote about his experiences extensively in the years following.

“Artists working in the mid-nineteenth century painted scenes in the pictorial language of Claude Lorrain and other European

landscape painting is capable of appropriately conveying.... Rather than making a mimetic image of a location the aim is to produce an exemplary one, the result of a connection between artistic sensibility and scientific knowledge.” In response to this call for landscape paintings accurate in both physical detail and psychological or emotional impact, artists faced with the sheer enormity of the landscape of the Americas found it necessary to adapt their technique. Paintings became more elongated in order to offer up the full expansiveness of the subject. In some cases, artists also tinkered with special dimensions, contracting or expanding the space to convey the sensation of being immersed in these dramatic scenes.

Julius Friedrich Anton Schrader, Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), 1859, oil on canvas, 62 1/2 × 54 3/8 in. Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of H.O. Havemeyer, 1889.

As Valéria Piccoli, co-curator of the exhibition and Chief Curator at Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo, Brazil, explained: “According to Humboldt, the specific geographical locations, climates and topographical features of each of the earth’s regions create particular habitats for varieties of living species that organize themselves in different physiognomies, whose multiplicity only

LEFT: Rafael Troya, Cotopaxi [Vista de la Cordillera Oreintal desde Tiopullo] (detail), 1874, oil on canvas, 36 5/8 × 63 3/8 in. Museo Nacional del Ministerio del Cultura y Patrimonio del Ecuador, Museo Perez Chiriboga del Banco Central. CENTER: George Catlin, Beautiful Prairie Bluffs above the Poncas, 1050 Miles Above St. Louis (detail), 1832, oil on canvas, 11 1/4 × 14 7/16 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr. RIGHT: Paul Kane, The Cackabakah Falls (detail), 1849-1856, oil on canvas, 20 1/16 × 27 15/16 in. On loan from the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada, gift of Sir Edmund Osler

Landscape and National Identity

Indigenous Erasure

During the time period when these artworks were being

Throughout the works featured in this exhibition, viewers will find that Indigenous peoples are notably absent from the images. Although the hemisphere was widely populated, European settlers—and artists with European roots—preferred to see the land as uninhabited and available, a doctrine known as terra nullius, or “empty land.” In scenes that depicted the land as cultivated and bearing fruit, the absence of images of laborers—who were largely enslaved Africans or Indigenous Americans—is also a subtle form of propaganda. The lush plantations of South America are pictured as if they were created and maintained without the suffering, hard work, and dispossession of Indigenous people.

made, the European population of the American hemisphere went through dramatic changes, moving from colonial and frontier communities to independent countries with their own national histories and identities. Interestingly, the emergence of landscape painting across the Americas corresponds with these breaks from the colonizing countries. In most cases, artists in the New World did not begin to work seriously in the landscape genre until after their countries had achieved independence. Brownlee has one possible reason for this trend: “Independence and the formation of nations separate from the colonizers is based on an identification with the land and its resources,” he said. “It’s partly because of the economic potential of the landscape. In the case of the US, for example, that’s what drove the colonists to separate from England—not wanting to pay taxes to the crown—and that became the foundation for an emergent national identity.” While particular landscape images became iconic for certain nations and regions—the Pampas of Argentina, for example; Cotopaxi Volcano in Ecuador; or Kakabeka Falls in Canada—there were subtle differences in how those landscapes were portrayed and how they represented the people of those nations. Artists in Mexico and South America tended to paint fewer landscapes than US artists of this time, and their work tended to be more patron-driven: essentially “portraits” of land holdings of wealthy patrons. In Canada, artists were more likely to create landscapes familiar to particular regions with an aim to selling the paintings to the growing mercantile class. In Mexico, landscape paintings were sometimes freighted with the deep local history and powerful symbolic imagery of sites that had been home to great human civilizations for hundreds, even thousands of years, such as the ancient Valley of Mexico, seat of Indigenous Mexican civilization since around 100 BC.

Land and Self As the colonies matured into nations, artists who were born in the Americas moved toward painting more personal representations of the landscape. Their landscape paintings then went beyond geographical or scientific exploration, and beyond the establishment of national icons, to turn inward for a more individualized connection with the land. Over the course of a century, artists in the Americas had moved from documenting a strange and exotic landscape to embracing that landscape as their own: first on a national level, and finally, on a deeply personal and individual one. Examining the work of artists across the hemisphere in one exhibition helps to map this path. “Through this process we seek to understand the ways in which we are connected and that which makes us distinct,” said Uhlyarik.

“Land, first to last, has been the currency of exchange between settlers and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas,” wrote Ruth B. Phillips in the exhibition publication. “Colonizers proclaimed the doctrine of terra nullius to justify annexations of territory without negotiation of any kind.”

In fact, sophisticated cultures and civilizations of Indigenous people had thrived in the Americas for thousands of years. Their presence on the land was largely omitted from landscape paintings, both North and South. Paintings that did include Indigenous people often romanticized and exoticized them, casting these individuals in an imaginary narrative that promoted expansion by settlers. The works in this exhibition span from a period during which Indigenous peoples in the Americas continued to be subjected to intense and cruel violence and forced assimilation. Georgiana Uhlyarik Picturing the Americas includes a section that discusses the general absence of Indigenous peoples and traditions in the art history of landscape painting in the Americas. In addition, at Crystal Bridges, curators have worked with Candessa Teehee, PhD, Executive Director of the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to add a Native American perspective to the exhibition.

Thomas Cole, Landscape with Figures: A Scene from "The Last of the Mohicans”, 1826, oil on panel. 26 1/8 × 43 1/16 in. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection.

Asher B. Durand's Kindred Spirits is one of Crystal Bridges' most recognizable and treasured paintings. It has become a symbol of our mission to unite the power of art with the beauty of nature and is so closely tied with Crystal Bridges and Northwest Arkansas that the setting is often mistaken for our very own Ozark Mountains. Durand would never have expected his beloved Catskills to be interpreted this way, but our adoption of the landscape as symbol is not new. Landscape painting is a cultural construct, and for hundreds of years landscape paintings have been used to convey meaning and ideas. Take another look at Kindred Spirits—what are some of the symbols and meanings Durand included in his landscape? CURATOR Mindy Besaw

TREE WITH MOSS/ MOSS ON ROCK Durand advocated for direct observation and sketching in nature in order to capture details, surfaces, and textures. In his 1855 treatise, “Letters on Landscape Painting,” Durand urged students to go into nature for study and renewal, for “your intellect and feelings will become elevated and purified in nature.”

WATERFALLS The landscape pictured is not representative of a specific location, but an amalgamation of key sites Cole had painted in the Catskill Mountains. Here, the Catskill pass and Kaaterskill Falls are combined in a way that is not geographically possible.

BLASTED TREE The blasted tree (as opposed to a cut tree) symbolized the sublime power of nature, and celebrated America’s most valuable asset—the wilderness. This tree is also an emblem of Cole and his truncated life (he was only 47 years old when he died of pneumonia).

FIGURES Pictured here are poet William Cullen Bryant (hat in hand), and painter Thomas Cole. Durand painted Kindred Spirits as a memorial to Cole, who had recently died. For many, landscapes provided spaces in which to commune with God and the divine.

Asher Brown Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1894, oil on canvas. 44 x 36 in. Photography by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A R T 1 0 1 16

HIDDEN SYMBOLS IN THE LANDSCAPE

Thomas Eakins’s portrait of Archbishop James Frederick Wood, 1877, oil on canvas, 82 1/4 x 60 in.

In the Corner by George Benjamin Luks, ca. 19201921, oil on board mounted on board, 48 x 36 1/2 in.

The Chelsea Girl by James McNeill Whistler, 1884, oil

Photography by Edward C. Robison III.

on canvas, 65 × 35 in.

THREE NEW ACQUISITIONS TO CRYSTAL BRIDGES’ PERMANENT COLLECTION ARE NOW ON VIEW IN THE MUSEUM’S GALLERIES AFTER UNDERGOING CONSERVATION. Boston-based conservator Jim Wright removed dust, grime, and old varnish from the Luks and Whistler paintings. Varnish protects the paint layers and, in the process, some varnishes saturate colors in a painting. But over time, it can gradually darken or shift in color toward a muddy yellow or brownish tone. Wright used a gentle solvent to remove the old varnish. He then carefully inpainted a few minute areas where paint had been lost, and then applied a fresh coat of varnish to return the painting as closely as possible to its original appearance. Eakins’s large portrait required a more extensive treatment. Sometimes, conservators working with old paintings such as this one are faced not only with the inevitable effects of time or unstable environment, but also with the results of previous conservation efforts. In the case of Eakins’s Archbishop, parts of the original painting, including the area of green in the foreground, had been significantly overpainted in an earlier restoration

T H E VA U LT 17

OUT OF THE SHADOWS PAINTING CONSERVATION

campaign. The work had also been selectively cleaned in the past, resulting in an uneven appearance between previously treated and untreated areas. This is not to say that the painting’s earlier conservator had been irresponsible or incompetent. “We have to remember that past restorers were using the best techniques and materials of their day,” said Margi Conrads, Director of Curatorial Affairs. “Today the science of the field has advanced tremendously. Conservators work using high-powered microscopes and sophisticated tools such as infrared reflectography, to understand the construction of paint layers, thereby retouching the least amount possible, instead of overpainting an entire area.” Modern conservators have a thorough background in chemistry, art history, and studio art. They keep abreast of the latest scientific innovations in solvents, pigments, and technology. Drawing on these resources, Wright uncovered and restored parts of the painting that had been hidden for decades, including delicate glazing and details in the lace on the Archbishop’s girdle, as well as furniture and decorations that were previously obscured in the painting’s dark background. EDITOR Linda DeBerry

LANDSCAPES 18

Mark Rothko, No. 210/No. 211 (Orange), 1960, oil on canvas, 69 x 63 in. ÂŠ 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photography by Edward C. Robison III.

CURATOR Chad Alligood

LANDSCAPE PAINTING LIKELY PREDATES THE HISTORICAL RECORD; THE IMPULSE TO PICTURE THE WORLD AROUND US IS ONE OF THE DEFINING ASPECTS OF BEING HUMAN. THE ASTONISHING VARIETY OF LANDSCAPE IMAGES THROUGH TIME FROM ACROSS THE WORLD TELLS US ABOUT THE CULTURES FROM WHICH THE IMAGES EMERGE. Chinese scroll paintings of the countryside show how Song dynasty artists of the eleventh century viewed the world and their place in it. Dutch maritime paintings, with their exacting verisimilitude and airy vistas, exalted commerce over sea routes just as the larger Dutch culture did. The French Impressionists, with their pretty daubs and dabs of paint, presented an idealized picture of nature that served as the perfect antidote to the urban milieu of the rising bourgeois class of the late nineteenth century. But what of recent landscape painting in the United States? When we think of modern and contemporary painting, landscape is hardly the first subject that comes to mind. A trajectory of the American avant-garde after World War II, traced from Abstract Expressionism through Pop Art, Minimalism, and beyond, would seem to mostly sidestep landscape as subject matter. However, in our 1940s to Now Gallery, you can witness the ongoing American preoccupation with depicting the natural world. After all, at Crystal Bridges, our mission is to celebrate the American spirit in a setting that unites the power of art with the beauty of nature. It makes sense that our collection

OF THE MIND 19

As you step into the gallery and glance to your right, the shifting red-orange veils of Mark Rothko's No. 210/No. 211 (Orange) (1960) bloom into your vision. At first blush, the painting appears to be simple in its organization: three rectangles stack within the larger border of the canvas. The topmost rectangle extends across the field, so oblong and diffuse at the edges as to be hardly a rectangle at all. The middle shape, sturdy and solid in proportion, anchors the composition, squatting atop another, smaller rectangle at its base. Carrotty orange in hue, these three figures seemingly float against the deep carmine atmosphere of the background, their edges feathering into the border. Rothko is the kind of painter people often discuss in solemn and reverential tones. Simultaneously, he has also been a subject of scorn and ridicule since he emerged in 1930s New York City as one of “The Ten”—ten painters who dissented against what they perceived as the “literalness” of representational American painting that was then shown in such places as the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Rothko’s approach to painting, in place of a figurative vocabulary, was to simplify. Responding to a nasty review in the New York Times in 1942, Rothko explained why he preferred a simplified approach: “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth." These are the terms Rothko set for himself; he made paintings like No. 210/No. 211 (Orange) as illustrations of these grandiose principles. Yet as abstract as they may seem, Rothko’s ethereal fields of color maintain a reference, however oblique, to the long tradition of picturing the world around us. In the history of landscape painting in the West, the composition most often divides into a clearly defined foreground, middle ground, and background. This three-part structure traditionally describes the field of the landscape painting, treating the frame as a window through which the viewer peers into a fictive world. Consider, for instance, Jasper Francis Cropsey’s The Backwoods of America (1858), a prime example of this type of composition, currently on view in our Early Nineteenth-Century Gallery. In the foreground, an American pioneer ambles through the felled trees of the frontier wilderness, broadaxe propped on one shoulder and attended

Jasper Francis Cropsey, The Backwoods of America, 1858, oil on canvas. 42 x 70 1/4 in. Photography by John Lamberton, courtesy of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.

demonstrates the American fascination with landscape and its myriad possibilities across all time periods. You can even discover landscape painting in a place where you might least expect it: the color-field abstraction of Mark Rothko.

THOUGH PERHAPS YOU CAN'T TELL AT FIRST GLANC PAINTING IN THE GALLERY HAS MUCH TO SAY ABOU 20

by a black dog at his feet. The sunlight helpfully falls on this figure, defining his space as a focal point of the composition. Just behind the woodsman, the rustic log cabin of a frontier homestead gleams from within a clutch of gnarly trees, while a cherubic baby sits on the stoop overlooking a small cabbage garden. Beyond this quaint, idealized scene, epic mountaintops reflect the waning light of an autumn sunset; a placid lake underlines the quickly darkening space. Here, Cropsey uses the traditional three-part structure of landscape—foreground, middle ground, background—to present his romanticized vision of the nineteenth-century American West. With these terms in mind, return now to No. 210/No. 211 (Orange): there you will also find three distinct zones within the composition, demarcated by bands running left-to-right across the field of the painting. These bands, furthermore, suggest nothing so much as a horizon line, one of the central compositional elements of a traditional landscape painting. Because of this apparent reference to the conventions of landscape painting, critics since the 1950s have often likened Rothko’s abstract pictures to landscapes, despite the fact that they remain totally bereft of explicit representations of the natural world. Beyond their lack of recognizable pictorial images, Rothko’s abstractions seem totally flat—unlike Cropsey’s The Backwoods of America, for instance, which seems to depict a deep space, miles and miles into the far distance of the mountains. And yet, there is a kind of space described by No. 210/No. 211 (Orange), even if it isn’t as immediately evident to our eyes as Cropsey’s neatly defined bucolic scene. You can find that space if you look to the borders of the painting, where the saturated intensity of the orange feathers into the murkier depths of the red. These two colors sit adjacent to one another on the spectrum, their wavelengths close enough to stimulate a subtle vibration in your vision. As you sit and observe the painting, this effect becomes more pronounced in your perception. Time unfolds: the seemingly flat object appears to open up at the edges, holding and describing previously unseen space. Rothko intentionally created such optical experiences. He once claimed of his abstract paintings: “either their surfaces are expansive and push outward in all directions, or their surfaces contract and rush inward in all directions. Between these two poles you can find everything I want to say.” We might think of their relationship to landscape, therefore, as being more experiential than mimetic— that is, No. 210/No. 211 (Orange) seeks to reproduce the effects of experiencing space rather than the appearance of it. Instead of showing you how the landscape looks, the painting approximates how it feels. Feeling, experience, perception: these were the calling cards of the New York School artists, who created large-scale paintings intended to index their individual psyches. Many of these painters,

including Rothko, were inspired by Surrealist artists to adapt the landscape format to picture the inner self—a kind of psychological landscape of the mind. You can see such inspiration in Rothko’s early painting Greek Tragedy (1941-42), also on display in our 1940s to Now Gallery. Here, Rothko deploys imagery culled from ancient sources—a stylized head of a mythic hero, snippets of classical architectural forms—alongside biomorphic images like the red bird in the lower half of the painting. Rothko intended for these images to tell a “tragic and timeless” story. At the same time, even at this early juncture in the development of his work, they show the artist working through the traditional three-part composition of a landscape: even this painting divides into three horizontal registers. Works like Greek Tragedy demonstrate how Rothko developed the iconic abstract format evident in his mature paintings like No. 210/No. 211 (Orange). But they also indicate how the artist was thinking deeply about the traditions of painting. Because he was seeking a universal vocabulary for his art, landscape—a subject as old as art itself—presented the ideal jumping-off point for a new way of approaching the picture. Though perhaps you can’t tell at first glance, that seemingly simple orange and red painting in the gallery has much to say about the world around us and our place in it. The next time you visit Crystal Bridges, take a moment to find the landscape in the work—or perhaps, to chart a landscape of the mind.

E, THAT SEEMINGLY SIMPLE ORANGE AND RED T THE WORLD AROUND US AND OUR PLACE IN IT. 21

landscape painting from tierra del fuego to the arctic

Featuring more than 100 landscapes from across the hemisphere, the exhibition illustrates how the connections and continuities of our shared history and land are undeniable: we are connected and yet we are distinct. Created between the early 1800s and the early 1900s, just as nations in the Americas gained and asserted their independence, the paintings represent efforts by explorers and by artists—both European and locally born—to capture and define the essence of a place on canvas, always rooted in the natural beauty of the land. Visitors will encounter both well-known and unfamiliar sites as seen through the eyes of such celebrated landscape artists as Brazil’s Félix Émile Taunay and Tarsila do Amaral, Mexico’s Eugenio Landesio and Gerado Murillo (“Dr. Atl”), Canada’s Cornelius Krieghoff and Lawren S. Harris, as well as Thomas Cole and Georgia O’Keeffe from the United States. In bringing together for the first time iconic works from various nations, Picturing the Americas reveals how landscapes communicate aspirations, nationhood, and distinct cultural identity. It also challenges visitors to engage with environmental issues and consider the land as a space of conquest, exploration, and contemplation—issues still very pertinent today. Don't miss this opportunity to travel the Americas at Crystal Bridges. $10, FREE/Members and youth ages 18 and under Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic was organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

SPONSORED AT CRYSTAL BRIDGES BY

Harlan and Kathy Crow Westrock Coffee Company Randy and Valorie Lawson/Lawco Energy Group Mark and Diane Simmons Charitable Fund Christie’s

FAR LEFT: Felix-Emile Taunay, Baia de Guanabara Vista da Ilha das Cobras (detail), 1828, oil on canvas. 26 15/16 × 53 15/16 in. Acervo do Instituto Ricardo Brennand, Recife, PE, Brazil. TOP RIGHT: Frederick Horsman Varley, The Cloud, Red Mountain (detail), 1927-1928, oil on canvas, 34 5/16 × 40 3/16 in. Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, bequest of Charles S. Band, Toronto, 1970, 69/127. BOTTOM RIGHT: Antonio Smith, Cachapoal River (detail), 1870, oil on canvas, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile.

EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT 22

THROUGH JAN 18

DRAWING ON THE POWER THAT THE LAND HOLDS IN OUR IMAGINATIONS, PICTURING THE AMERICAS INVITES VIEWERS TO TRAVERSE A VAST AND MAGNIFICENT LANDMASS THAT SPANS FROM CANADA’S ARCTIC TO THE ICY TIP OF ARGENTINA AND CHILE, AND TO SEE ITS ICONS ANEW .

Samuel F. B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre, 1831–1833, oil on canvas, 73 3/4 x 108 in. (187.3 x 274.3 cm). Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1992.51 Photography ©Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago

C O M I N G S O O N 23

JAN 26 – APR 18, 2016

artworks in the famous Salon Carré at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Morse chose 38 paintings and two sculptures from the Louvre’s legendary collection and arranged them into a single composition, re-scaling many. The painting was Morse’s masterwork and the culmination of his studies in Europe.

AND THE ART OF INVENTION Invention and the transmission of innovative ideas are what connect many of Samuel F.B. Morse’s (1791-1872) endeavors. Famous for developing the electromagnetic telegraph and for the code that bears his name, Morse was also an innovative painter and promoter of the daguerreotype, an early form of photography.

Morse sought to raise the standard of cultural taste in his native country, and Gallery of the Louvre was intended to serve as an instrument for teaching and as a vehicle for improving cultural awareness. The artist presented the painting as a single-picture traveling exhibition, a common way of debuting an important artwork at the time. However, while critics praised the painting, the public was unimpressed by it. Disappointed by the reaction, Morse gave up painting and focused instead on introducing the daguerreotype to America and developing the telegraph.

In 1829, Morse traveled to Europe and stayed three years to deepen his artistic knowledge, resulting in one of his most important paintings, Gallery of the Louvre. This painting and a study—the portrait of Francis I (copied from Titian’s 1539 painting) are featured in an upcoming exhibition in the Museum's permanent collection galleries organized by the Terra Foundation.

In addition to Gallery of the Louvre and Francis I, Crystal Bridges’ exhibition will feature a 30-minute video documenting the painting’s conservation, as well as an interactive feature allowing you to curate your own virtual exhibition using works from the permanent collection. Come view Morse's remarkable virtual exhibition, and create your own “Gallery of Crystal Bridges.”

SAMUEL F.B. MORSE’S GALLERY OF THE LOUVRE CURATOR Manuela Well-Off-Man

Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre is a large painting: it measures about six feet by nine, and depicts an imagined installation of

This exhibition is organized by and with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

I HAVE PHOTOGRAPHS

WITH THESE IDEAS

IN MIND: TO PORTRAY

AMERICANS AS THEY

LIVE AT PRESENT.

THEIR EVERY DAY AND

THEIR SUNDAY. THEIR

REALISM AND DREAM.

Robert Frank

TOP: Inge Morath, Outside Memphis, Tennessee, 1960. © Inge Morath/Magnum Photos MIDDLE: Justine Kurland, Claire, 8th Ward, 2012. © Justine Kurland, Courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery, New York BOTTOM: Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, Wires, 2008. © Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, Courtesy the artists and RaebervonStenglin, Zurich and Peter Lav, Copenhagen

ACROSS THE USA

C O M I N G S O O N 25

FEB 27 – MAY 30, 2016

CALL OF THE OPEN ROAD This spring, Crystal Bridges will host its first large-scale temporary exhibition fully focused on the art of photography. The Open Road, organized by Aperture, traces the history of American road-trip photography from 1955 to present, representing 19 photographers and approximately 100 works. While many of the photographers and bodies of work have previously been explored in a monographic, singular sense, this exhibition and corresponding catalog are the first to look at these works as a thematic whole; sparking conversation through an illustrated history of the United States, with an underlying question: “Is it even possible to imagine America without the road trip?” Chronologically and historically, the exhibition’s journey begins with the work of Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank, represented with a selection of work from his monumental 1955 series, The Americans. Pivotal in many ways, it was possible largely due to the strength of the post-war American economy, with over 100 million cars manufactured in the US by 1950, over 41,000 miles of new road added to the landscape, and photographic technology that made image-making faster and more portable. When combined, these advancements greatly broadened the field of opportunity for photographers. In addition to Frank, the exhibition includes photographers whose names are well represented in the canon of American photographic

history: Ed Ruscha, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, and William Eggleston, to name a few, alongside contemporary work by Alec Soth, Justine Kurland, and Ryan McGinley, and foreign-born photographers Inge Morath, Bernard Plossu, and Jacob Holdt. This rich mix of artistic perspectives throughout the exhibition enlightens ways of seeing America as captured through the lens, all the while investigating the look and feel of our vast and diverse nation. Due to the expanse of decades represented, the exhibition also depicts the change over time regarding artistic aesthetics, moving from an emphasis on black-and-white printmaking as the notion of “fine art” to the introduction and eventual takeover of color prints. This transition offers us an opportunity to consider the question: “How does color alter our perception of timelessness for bygone moments?” Crystal Bridges will be the first host venue for this exciting new exhibition. Load up the car, hit the road, and journey down The Open Road with us, opening February 27, 2016. Exhibition rganized by Aperture Foundation, New York; David Campany and Denise Wolff, Curators. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

CURATORIAL ASSISTANT Alison Demorotski

E D U C AT I O N 26

A DECLARATION OF LEARNING

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signs the Declaration of Learning at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., January 30, 2013.

Many people don’t realize that the US State Department has a large collection of objects relating to US history. Now the State Department aims to put these items to use as resources for the creation of innovative education programs in Arkansas.

At Crystal Bridges, this program builds

In June, the educators and representatives from each on what we do really well—teach with of the partner institutions works of art. We teach methodology convened for a two-day summit at Crystal Bridges (sponsored in a wonderful way: making people by First Quality) for intensive feel comfortable and getting teachers collaboration. Teachers learned from the experts how to “read” to think about the work in relation to a painting or object, and how to themes—like civic engagement, like find and use oral histories. They then brainstormed ways to use culture—to start a conversation. the objects they had selected as ASSISTANT MANAGER FOR K-12 PARTNERSHIP PROGRAMS ZEV SLURZBERG The program relies on a special touch points in the development group of 27 Arkansas teachers of grades 7 through 12 who were of educational resources that are selected from more than 100 applicants. These teachers are placed being used in their classrooms during the current school year. in teams of four from seven regions across the state. Each team Based on the success of this pilot, the program may be expanded includes an art teacher, a history teacher, an English or language arts to additional states in the years ahead. EDITOR Linda DeBerry

Photo: State Department (public domain)

The Declaration of Learning initiative is a pilot program organized by the State Department and involving Crystal Bridges, the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, and the Arkansas Department of Education. The project aims to work collaboratively to create educational tools for students and teachers, utilizing objects in the collections of the partner institutions.

teacher, and a school librarian. The teams chose objects from each of the three institutional collections and work together to create lessons that incorporate these objects into their respective curricula.

TR AILS & GROUNDS 27

When painting a landscape, an artist may choose to add things or leave things out; or she may choose to create scenes born wholly from her imagination and make them look as realistic as those painted from life. The landscape at Crystal Bridges is itself a combination of the natural and the manmade. The “built landscapes” near the Museum were created specifically to integrate the architecture into the landscape that surrounds it, seamlessly. An excellent example of this is the cascading rocky streambed that can be viewed from the Great Hall Corridor. This engineered vista was created out of necessity when the Museum was built: to manage outflow from a natural channel that carries rainwater down the hillside. The builders had several challenges to face in creating this landscape: the high volume of water that moves through the stream during rains; the lack of nutrient-rich topsoil; and the steep angle of the hillside, which made it impossible to reach the site with heavy equipment. The rainwater that runs through this streambed now includes runoff from the nearby parking lots. To protect the water quality in the Museum’s ponds, shallow drains were installed to capture the parking-lot runoff from the first few minutes of a rainstorm and empty it elsewhere. During heavy rain, these drains are overwhelmed, but by then the lots have been rinsed clean, and the water is safe to empty into the ponds. With drains installed, 250 tons of rock were used to line the creek bed. Topsoil was brought in, and the hillside was secured with native plants, including several large trees, some with root balls as much as six feet tall. These were lifted in by crane and maneuvered into pre-dug holes from the parking lot above, in a process Eccleston calls “tree golf” because hitting the holes in the first try was such a long-shot.

Dero Sanford

Bringing together elements of the manmade and the natural, this engineered landscape creates a beautiful vista for guests inside the Museum, while at the same time functioning as a water-control system that protects the surrounding natural environment.

NATURE REBUILT

EDITOR Linda DeBerry

BO BART 28

Artist and filmmaker Bo Bartlett is a gentle, thoughtful guy, approachable and friendly in a quiet way: a world apart from the tough, aggressive demeanor of the subject in Lobster Wars, his painting in Crystal Bridgesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; permanent collection. 29

The subjects of Bartlett's work often confront the viewer with a direct gaze, as if they are aware of being watched and are watching you in turn. Bartlett has an introspective and spiritual tendency that is perhaps manifested in this piercing look. He is unafraid of facing and grappling with matters of the spirit. In his youth, he considered becoming a Baptist minister, and in interviews he has spoken of receiving a vision in the mid-nineties telling him “you must learn what it means to be open.” Then in 2006, on a cross-country trip with his wife and fellow artist, Betsy Eby, to create a film about art, Bartlett suddenly and inexplicably began to go blind. Doctors discovered a tumor in his brain as the source of the trouble, and with surgery his sight was restored. The experience is recorded in the couple’s film See: An Art Road Trip. Partly because of this event, Bartlett has since become “a consummate do-gooder,” and has helped to establish the Bo Bartlett Center at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, an experiential learning center and cultural hub for the visual arts in Bartlett’s home town. LINDA DEBERRY What prompted you to take on Lobster Wars as a subject? BO BARTLETT I just paint what presents itself. In that case I was up in Maine and I would look out on the lobster boats and that one boat with the skull and crossbones was intriguing. Ronnie Ames, who is the lobsterman who owned it, was known as the most notorious lobsterman. He was sort of the godfather of lobstermen up and down the Maine coast. I asked him for four or more years to pose for me; not really realizing, when I first started asking, how notorious he was or how well known he was for being the roughest lobsterman. I asked him to pose and he would say “oh yeah, I’ll get around to that,” and then just not ever do it. Then at the end of one season when I was leaving the island and I was coming across in my little, tiny rowboat, he saw me coming and he said, “all right, boy, I’m ready to pose.” So we sat over there and he started posing and I did some drawings of him. The ice was broken at that point, so the next year when I came back he started posing for me. Then it took another few years to get around to figuring out how I would pose him in the boat and what it would look like exactly. We became really close friends. It was a four-year process, from the time I got the idea to the time I finished the painting. LD Can you talk a bit about your mental process in creating a work like Lobster Wars? There seems to be so much going on under the surface of that work: a lot of thought: metaphor, perhaps. Where do you begin? Bo Bartlett, The Lobster Wars, 2007, oil on linen, 80 x 112 in.

You have to choose to not accept the precanned idea of anything—to see the world freshly.

Bo Bartlett

BO BARTLETT’S LOBSTER WARS IS CURRENTLY IN THE MUSEUM’S VAULT TO MAKE WAY FOR THE EXHIBITION OF NEW ACQUISITIONS IN THE 1940S TO NOW GALLERY.

BB Honestly, often the first thing just comes from something you see. I think in that case it was probably the sail. It’s just such a striking thing and it’s hard to believe that’s real and that someone would have that. And there’s this long process of figuring out: is it worth painting? Is it an idea that can have legs? Is it an idea that goes further than just that initial hit, and what are the ramifications of it? In that case, I began to think about how Matinicus (an island near the one Bartlett and Eby own on the Maine coast) is 24 miles out to sea, and it’s a very hard-working lobstering island. They’re very territorial. You have to live there to lobster there. Sometimes guys will come and try to lay their traps around nearby and that’s when they’ll get cut, and sometimes some violence will break out. In a way, though, it’s like a microcosm of the world, and I think that’s what I found most interesting. They’re fighting over lobster, but in the rest of the world, you know, it’s the same thing, it’s territorial. They might be fighting over ideology or oil or other resources in other parts of the world, but there they’re fighting over this one thing. You have to be strong and tough to be out there in the seas like that. Ronnie took me out one day. I’d been working on the drawings in the studio and he said “we gotta get you out there!” So he put me in my skiff and tied it up behind his boat and took Betsy and I way out into the North Atlantic. I hadn’t been out there like that, just in a little tiny skiff out there, with the seas really rocking. Your boat goes down and disappears and the other boats are going down and disappearing. He wanted me to get the feel for that. That was when I got the idea of how I would pose him in the boat, and I took a few photographs. I do that as a way to trigger the memory of being out there. It’s hard to paint in the middle of a boat. LD You were very close to Andrew Wyeth, can you talk about that friendship, and how it has impacted your work? BB I’d been to Florence, and when I was leaving, I was given a list of maybe ten artists you could maybe study with in America who were realist painters. You have to remember, this was in the ‘70s and there really was not a realist movement. The first year there, I went out to try to visit Wyeth once and see if he would take me on as a student, but we didn’t connect that day, and it was 15 years later when they called me. I had gone to school and started a career and they saw a review of mine and invited me out. It was really a great treat for me. Betsy Wyeth bought my paintings and was very supportive and said she saw that I’d made film—which, I had only barely made a few small films—so she hired me.* For five years I was out there every day and I spent every day with him. And at the end of the day I’d come home from the studio and talk and draw. We became best friends, and we were best friends until he passed. He really taught me how to sustain a career in painting every day. LD Lately you created some works that feature female couples. That was a pretty bold choice for a male artist. Can you tell me what prompted that? BB I was trying to find a way to do something new with the figure that I hadn’t seen done before. A lot of figures are generic figures. To

paint a portrait is hard and to paint a figure is hard, but to paint a portrait that’s also a nude is tricky to do; and then to do that with two figures where they’re both individuals, not just stereotypical, and then nude is quadruple hard to do. I do feel totally free to do whatever I want to do, and some of that came after what happened in the film, where I have a life-altering experience. I have a brain tumor; so I have a brush with death, basically. I do go blind in the film. Betsy was there to make sure I wouldn’t die and got me to the hospital. After that, I decided several things, and one of them was that I was going to do and say whatever I wanted to do and say, and not worry about what other people thought about it. That’s a very liberating thing. And the other was that I wanted to be a consummate do-gooder and not worry about what everybody thought or said about it. And let the pieces fall where they may. LD You have had a number of distinctly spiritual experiences. How has that affected your work, or do you think it’s partly an outgrowth of an artistic approach to the world that provides an opening to those experiences? BB Well you try to be open to experience and open to all the possibilities, but then you don’t want to turn them into dogma, either. You have to sort of choose to not accept the pre-canned idea of anything—to see the world freshly. I look out there and say “that’s a tree,” and just log that in as a tree and say “done,” and then I move on to the next thing. But you want to try to live in the world so that you forget that those things are named “trees” out there and that color is a color that people happen to call “green.” You want to look at it and experience it in the moment so you see it for all of its real, unbelievable, and ineffable wonder. Then you experience it more for what it really is and not for little capsules of words that have been placed on it. Then you’re in the world in a different way and you’re charged in a different way and you can experience and record it in a different way. LD Do you think being a visual artist opens that window a little wider? BB I think it’s how the brain works, probably. I read in the New York Times about how artists have more gray matter...A funny little thing: one of the things that we learned when I was doing studies of my brain when I was having my tumor problems, was that I don’t have a left vertebral artery. This is just an anomaly from birth. The blood has to go through the right brain first, and then it goes over to the left brain. So, I’m much more just biologically inclined to experience the world in a more feeling, sensitive, intuitive way. It’s the way my brain works, so that’s the way I experience the world. If my brain was structured differently, I would experience the world in a completely different way. I probably wouldn’t be as inclined to draw pictures to make sense of the world. *Snow Hill is a film autobiography of Andrew Wyeth that Bartlett and Eby produced in 1995.

TOP LEFT: Bo Bartlett, The Light Years, 2011, oil on linen, 80 x 100 in. TOP RIGHT: Bo Bartlett, Outside this Room is War and Terror, 2013, oil on panel, 27 x 34 in. BOTTOM: Bo Bartlett, The Somnambulists, 2010, oil on linen, 82 x 82 in.

If my brain was structured differently, I would experience the world in a completely different way. I probably wouldn't be as inclined to draw pictures to make sense of the world. Bo Bartlett

IN PHOTOGRAPHS LIB

Gear up for the upcoming exhibition The Open Road (see page 22) by taking a spin with a selection of the Library’s collection of artist’s books by Ed Ruscha. Ruscha produced 16 small books between 1963 and 1978, several of which pay homage to sights seen while on the road.

His first book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, published in 1963, was intentionally uncomplicated. The book’s interior was solely snapshots of 26 deliberately nondescript gasoline stations along with captions giving their locations along Route 66. First published in a limited edition of 400 copies, but produced commercially with offset photographic prints, the book was lambasted by some critics as cheap and unartistic. Others however embraced the mass-produced nature and playful accessibility of his work as in keeping with the spirit of the Pop Art movement. Twentysix Gasoline Stations became a cult classic, and was republished in two larger editions later in the 1960s. Today it is recognized as one of the first modern artist’s books.

Ruscha’s 1966 book Every Building on the Sunset Strip is in itself a vicarious road trip. Created from stills taken from one continuous strip of motion picture film, the images were captured while Ruscha drove the entirety of the iconic boulevard. One of his most technically complex books, Sunset Strip is made from nine pieces of paper folded accordion-style and glued together so the book unfurls over 25 feet.

Ruscha both participated in and parodied the American love affair with the automobile. His 1967 book Royal Road Test chronicled a vintage Royal typewriter thrown from Ruscha’s Buick LeSabre at 90 mph. Detailed images of each mangled part and where it was found mimic the precision of a car crash investigation. ARCHIVIST AND INTERIM LIBRARY DIRECTOR Valerie Sallis

The library is lucky to hold copies of 12 of Ruscha’s 16 early books, including several first editions. Make a research appointment to see these interesting works in the library, or plan to attend the Great Reveal program in March on Ruscha’s books to get a closer view. 34

Dero Sanford

LIBR ARY

THE AMERICAN ROAD TRIP

TOP: Samuel Finley Breese Morse, 1840 / Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, photographer. Macbeth Gallery records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. BOTTOM: Samuel Finley Breese Morse, Marquis de Lafayette, 1825, oil on canvas, 29 3/4 x 24 3/4 in.

EDITOR Linda DeBerry

Samuel Finley Morse was born in 1791 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He traveled to London in 1811, where he was accepted into the Royal Academy. Morse and other American artists abroad were distressed at the general lack of appreciation for art back home, and Morse determined to “endeavor ... to rouse the feeling for works of art” upon his return to the United States. Despite his ambitions, Morse had difficulty settling into any one line of work once he came home. He worked as an itinerant portrait painter for a time, and he and his brother Sidney tinkered with inventions, gaining a patent for a leather piston for water pumps. He decided to go into the ministry, but lasted just two months in divinity school and went back to painting portraits. In 1821, Morse set out on his first grand painting project: a large painting of the US House of Representatives in session, for which he completed more than 60 portraits from life. He imagined the work traveling the country and garnering for its artist both admiration and income, but neither came to be.

B A C K S T O R Y 35

SAMUEL FINLEY MORSE cultivate appreciation of art, rather than to teach. Students were, however, allowed to come into the gallery at set times to draw from casts of classical sculptures. When the head of the Academy, John Trumbull, locked the students out of the gallery, they petitioned Morse to help, and he set up a Drawing Association that met three evenings a week. Among his students were the young Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole. In 1826, Morse and his students formed the National Academy of the Arts of Design, modeled after the Royal Academy in London. He was elected president, and remained in office for 15 years.

THOUGH HE EVENTUALLY ABANDONED HIS ARTISTIC CAREER, IN A SENSE MORSE WAS SUCCESSFUL IN HIS EARLY AMBITION TO “ROUSE THE FEELING FOR WORKS OF ART.” THE NATIONAL ACADEMY HE HELPED TO FOUND HAS PRODUCED GENERATIONS OF ARTISTS, INCLUDING WINSLOW HOMER, GEORGE INNESS, ARSHILE GORKY, AND WILLEM DE KOONING, AMONG MANY OTHERS.

Morse finally caught a break in 1825, when he was selected to paint a full-size portrait of LaFayette for the City of New York. He traveled to Washington, DC for the sitting, and created the sketch of the French hero’s head that is now in Crystal Bridges’ collection. But his work was interrupted by the news that his wife Lucretia had died unexpectedly. Morse rushed home, but arrived too late to attend her funeral. After his wife’s death, Morse lived in New York, where he was elected to the American Academy of the Fine Arts, an organization designed to 35

PICTURIN G THE AM ERICAS N OVEMBER 11, 2015 The three curators of Picturing the Americas traveled from Canada, the US, and Brazil to join Crystal Bridges curators, exhibition sponsors, and Sustaining Members at the Director’s Reception.

FAMILY S U NDAY OCTOBER 11, 2015 October’s Family Sunday was part of The Big Draw: a worldwide celebration of drawing featuring indoor and outdoor drawing, gallery activities, and live music. Sponsored by the Roy and Christine Charitable Trust, Bank of America, N.A. Trustee, Northwest Arkansas Naturals, and Rockline Industries.

37 C E L E B R A T I O N S 37

HALLOWEEN IN THE HOLLOW OC TOBER 3 1, 2015 This artistic “ghouls night out” and costume ball has become a perennial favorite for artinfusion Members and guests. Sponsored by Saatchi & Saatchi X, RopeSwing, Arvest, Wright Lindsey Jennings, and Bluemoon Brewing Company.

BACHMAN -WILSON HOUSE RECEPTION OCTOBER 11, 2015 Sponsors of the construction of the Welcome Pavilion and grounds at Crystal Bridges were treated to a special tour of the house before the month-long Members Preview began on October 11.

M E M B E R S H I P 38

CRYSTAL BRIDGES TRAVEL PROGRAM

Travel is one of life’s greatest joys, and we are happy to offer our Members a variety of opportunities to discover regional, national, and international cultural destinations. Our Member travel program offers you the chance to explore major art destinations with fellow Members and Museum leadership, giving you the opportunity to make new friends while deepening your understanding of the world of art, architecture, and nature. More details about each trip will be emailed to Members and individual donors at the respective levels of opportunity.

You won’t want to miss this exciting 2016 travel line-up:

DALLAS, TX | April 14-16

Exclusively for artinfusion Members. Join a lively trip highlighting the Dallas Art Fair and meet/mingle with young patron groups from Dallas-area museums.

PHILADELPHIA, PA | June 9-11

Available for Members and individual donors giving $1,500/ more annually. Explore the beauty of art and nature in Philadelphia, America’s Garden Capital, with an inside look at world-renowned gardens and area museums.

FLAGSTAFF, AZ | July 14-16

Available for Members and individual donors giving $10,000/more annually. Join an exclusive adventure to the Painted Desert region of Northern Arizona and be among the first to view an art installation phenomenon not yet open to the public.

LITTLE ROCK, AR | October 20-21

Available for ALL Crystal Bridges Members and individual donors. See Little Rock like you’ve never seen it before! Join us for a road trip to Arkansas’ capital, and enjoy a taste of the visual, live, and culinary arts.

NEW YORK, NY | November 7-10

Available for Members and individual donors giving $10,000/more annually. Experience one of the art world’s most anticipated weeks of the year—the Post-War and Contemporary Art auctions. Dates may be subject to change. Contact Anne Jackson at 479.418.5789 or anne.jackson@crystalbridges.org for more information, or visit crystalbridges.org/get-involved/ membership/travel-program.

2016 EXHIBITIONS Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention JAN 23 – APR 18, 2016 MEMBER PREVIEW JAN 22 & 23 Known today primarily for his role in the development of the electromagnetic telegraph and Morse code, Samuel F. B. Morse began his career as a painter. One of his most important works is Gallery of the Louvre, now in the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art. In 1829, Morse embarked upon a three-year period of study in Paris. This culminated in the monumental Gallery of the Louvre, in which the artist chose masterpieces from the Louvre’s collection and depicted them as if they had been exhibited together in one of the museum’s grandest spaces. Today, after six months of conservation and two years of scholarly study, this impressive work reveals Morse’s fascination with the transmission of information: in both his desire to share masterworks from Europe with the American people, and his invention of Morse code. This exhibition was organized by and with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

The Open Road

Photography and the American Road Trip FEB 27 – MAY 30, 2016 MEMBER PREVIEW FEB 26 & 27 Joy rides, voyages of discovery, surveys, wanderings, migrations, travel diaries, and frank assessments of the nation: is America imaginable without the road trip? Featuring approximately 90 images, The Open Road presents a survey of America’s great photographers on the move across the nation, from the 1950s to today. Together, these photographers elevate the snapshot—often taken through the window of a moving car—to a work of art. This exhibition was organized by Aperture Foundation, New York, David Campany and Denise Wolff, Curators. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Art of Dance: 1830-1960

Marc Henning

OCT 22, 2016 – JAN 16, 2017 MEMBER PREVIEW OCT 21 & 22 The Art of Dance is the first major traveling exhibition to explore visual art related to the many forms of American dance. This exhibition of some 90 paintings, prints, sculptures, and photographs examines dance-inspired works from the 1830s to the 1960s—from dance in Native American cultures to ballroom dancing, to Jitterbug, swing, modern dance, and others. The exhibition highlights the central place dance has held in American culture and in the imagination of American artists. Visitors can also examine the American history of race, gender, ethnicity, and class through the lenses of dance and the visual arts.

American Made Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum JUL 2 – SEP 19, 2016 MEMBER PREVIEW JUL 1 & 2 With an exuberance that was fueled by revolutionary fervor and enlightenment philosophy, the lives of early Americans were filled with objects and artworks made by their own hands. Folk art—as these expressions are known today—was widely enjoyed and considered a natural part of the “furniture of a house.” Featuring more than 100 artworks, including quilts, paintings, furniture, sculpture, weathervanes, works on paper, and more from the renowned collection of the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, this exhibition examines the role works like these have played in shaping the visual image and national identity of the United States. This is the first presentation of American folk art at Crystal Bridges. This exhibition was organized by the American Folk Art Museum, New York, Stacy C. Hollander, chief curator, in collaboration with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

The exhibition was organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts.

PHIL ANTHROPY 40

WORKING TOGETHER TO WELCOME ALL TO THE BACHMAN-WILSON HOUSE Collaboration is at the heart of all we do at Crystal Bridges. It is no more evident than in the joining of hands around our special projects, the most recent of which is the opening of Frank Lloyd Wright's Bachman-Wilson House along with its Welcome Pavilion and beautiful grounds. The pavilion and surrounding landscape would not have been possible without the generosity of donors stepping up to ensure that the Bachman-Wilson House welcomes all in learning its fascinating story and that it feels forever at home in the Arkansas landscape. The Bob Bogle Family and Greenwood Gearhart share common traits of giving back to the community, caring deeply about quality experiences, and proudly calling Northwest Arkansas home. Through their generous support, students in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas had the unique opportunity to design and build the Welcome Pavilion, framing a first glance of the Bachman-Wilson House and its environment while providing background information about the architect and the history of the house.

The inviting grounds surrounding the Bachman-Wilson House are an essential part of the guest experience. We are indebted to P. Allen Smith, Superior Automotive Groupâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Bentonville, the Harrison and Rhonda French Family, Meza Harris, and the Tartaglino-Richards Family Foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all of whom shared the vision of making the outdoor environment a memorable one.

BACK COVER: Felix-Emile Taunay, Baia de Guanabara Vista da Ilha das Cobras (detail), 1828, oil on canvas. 26 15/16 × 53 15/16 in. Acervo do Instituto Ricardo Brennand, Recife, PE, Brazil. Photo: Sérgio Schnaider.

I had an opportunity to do that this summer when I was invited to make a presentation to the eighth annual Americans for the Arts Leadership Roundtable. The Roundtable is a forum for artists and art leaders to exchange experiences and best practices about the importance of the arts and culture in the United States. This year’s session focused on the value of the arts to tourism at the local, state, and federal level. As Crystal Bridges has become known as a leader in cultural tourism, we were invited to present a case study in best practices for working with tourism organizations and engaging audiences to create a welcoming and authentic destination, both for visitors from across the street and across “the Pond.”

We discussed the importance of remaining true to our immediate location; providing an authentic experience of Northwest Arkansas and the Ozarks while presenting the “American Spirit” at large. A focus on the individual experience with a quality experience of art, architecture, and nature has helped put Crystal Bridges at the forefront of museum engagement.

L A S T W O R D 41

The temporary exhibition Picturing the Americas offers a good catalyst for thinking about matters of place and scale. Now that Crystal Bridges has celebrated its fourth anniversary, we begin to be more engaged with other museums and institutions outside our immediate neighborhood, as well as with the “museum world” at large, as we continue to develop deep connections to our community and region. Sometimes it pays to step back and take a “big picture” look at where you are.

But it is Crystal Bridges’ welcoming attitude that really differentiates us from the rest of our field. During the Roundtable, Dennis Scholl, Advisor to the President of the Knight Foundation, explained that what stands out about Crystal Bridges is “the relentless pursuit of clarity for the visitor....The museum is aggressive about making people feel comfortable.” Making you, our Members and guests, feel that you belong here is, indeed, central to everything we do at Crystal Bridges, and we are glad that our “grand experiment” in Northwest Arkansas has now come to be understood as a positive case study for engaging audiences near and far. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Rod Bigelow

MAKING YOU, OUR MEMBERS AND GUESTS, FEEL THAT YOU BELONG HERE IS, INDEED, CENTRAL TO EVERYTHING WE DO AT CRYSTAL BRIDGES 41

ES IS G ID R B L A T S CRY NUE! E V . .S U Y L N THE O

SEE IT BEFORE IT’S GONE! 600 Museum Way • Bentonville, AR 72712

CrystalBridges.org 42

THROUGH JAN 18 FREE/Members!