Overview
- The museum has completed a 114,000-square-foot addition that expands its footprint by about 50 percent and adds three new pavilions linked by nearly five miles of trails.
- New campus amenities include a 15,000-square-foot pond, a 40-seat cafe with landscape views, studios, a digital art lab, artist housing, and maker spaces for hands-on programs.
- The new galleries open with Keith Haring in 3D, billed as the first show to focus on Haring’s three-dimensional work, alongside major installations such as Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room and Teresita Fernández’s Manigua (Mirror).
- Curators reorganized nearly the entire permanent collection into five thematic sections titled We, Dreaming, Nature, Making Our Mark, and We the People, and added about 200 Indigenous works including Kent Monkman’s Saving the Newcomers.
- Founded by Alice Walton with an endowment that keeps admission free, Crystal Bridges has drawn about 15 million visitors since 2011 and the expansion is likely to deepen the museum’s role in transforming Bentonville into a national cultural destination.