This past weekend we had a wonderful trip to Bentonville, Arkansas to visit the Crystal Bridges Art Museum in the heart of the Ozark Mountains. Alice Walton, who lives not too far from us here in Texas grew up there...daughter of Sam Walton of Walmart fame. She is a multi-billionaire who has a terrific interest in art...and even better, in sharing her interest with the public! So the Museum which she was the force behind opened up last fall and immediately landed on our bucket list! Bentonville is still the corporate offices of Walmart and it is the prettiest little town with some of the best restaurants I have ever dined in.
The trip is about seven hours from here...we went with another couple who have an equal interest in art and architecture as ours and none of us were a bit disappointed!! We traveled on Friday, went to the Crystal Bridges grounds by 9:30 on Saturday...the museum didn't open until 11:00 but the trails and grounds offered beautiful landscaping...natural and enhanced! So we took advantage of the time to roam around for a couple of hours.
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| A Stainless Steel tree..like one at the Modern in Fort Worth |
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| Dogwoods in bloom on the trail |
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| Redbud and dogwood in bloom |
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| Crystal Bridges from an overlook on one of the trails. |
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| Crystal Bridges from the front. |
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| The Last Supper, created with 20,736 spool of thread, hung on chains...upside down. To view the work of art right side up, there was a sphere to look through!!!! Size: Huge!!!! |
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| A closeup |
We were astounded by the art work that Alice has collected through the years...so many very famous artists and works...and the whole exhibit is open to the public for FREE! The area got very crowded and congested before we left, but the whole experience was totally worth every second of it! Only one damper took place Sunday morning about 30 minutes on the road...Two young does ran right out of the ditch and in front of us! There was no way to avoid hitting at least one of them...it all happened so fast that we are not sure if we hit both of them or not...quite a bit of damage to the hood, grillwork, head lights and bumper. It will take quite a bit of work...and our friends have only had the SUV less than an year.
Wow - I've never heard of this museum. It looks awesome. I'm can't believe the spool art!!!! Who would of thunk it? Sorry about the doe incident. I know that was sad. We once had a close encounter in the Hill country with a buzzard on the highway eating on road kill. Fortunately, he didn't do very much damage to our vehicle. Just scared us to death!
ReplyDeletelove the stainless steel tree~!
ReplyDeletelooks like a very interesting place to visit.
seeing your trees in bloom makes me anxious for our spring to come.
we hit a deer once and were glad that it was only one of a whole (large) herd . . . scared us and messed up the honda pretty badly but at least we were able to drive on home.
:-)
libbyQ