Collection: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Located on a 120-acre campus within walking distance of the thriving center of Bentonville, Arkansas, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is the first major museum dedicated to American art to open to the public in nearly half a century.

Crystal Bridges takes its name from a nearby natural spring and the graceful pavilions designed by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie.  The museum explores the unfolding story of the United States by actively collecting, preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting outstanding works of art that illuminate the nation’s cultural heritage and evolving artistic possibilities, continuities, and transformations.

The museum’s growing collection offers a superb overview of American art from the colonial era to the present day.  Its quality, range, and depth rival that of the best museums in the country.  Holdings include art historical icons such as Richard Caton Woodville’s War News from Mexico (1848), Asher Brown Durand’s Kindred Spirits (1849), George Wesley Bellow’s Excavation at Night (1908), and Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter (1943).  The collection features portraits by such diverse artists as Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri, and Andy Warhol; landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church, Robert Scott Duncanson, Martin Johnson Heade, William Merritt Chase, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Richard Estes; and narrative scenes by Benjamin West, Winslow Homer, Frederic Remington, John Sloan, Jacob Lawrence, Andrew Wyeth, and Kerry James Marshall.