Rod Bigelow | Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Welcome to The GoodTimes Show. In this captivating episode featuring a distinguished guest, Rod Bigelow, Executive Director and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, recorded live in the Sound Lounge at Blake Street House, Damon Epps introduces us to the world of Crystal Bridges. Crystal Bridges is Alice Walton's vision turned into reality, has changed the game in the art industry, and has plenty of plans for the future.
This museum is an architectural masterpiece and a community-centered cultural destination that aims to broaden the definition of American art worldwide. In his role, Rod Bigelow ensures that everyone visiting Crystal Bridges sees themselves represented in the art on view. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission.
In May 2005, the museum purchased a coveted Asher B. Durand landscape entitled Kindred Spirits from the New York Public Library for more than $35 million in a sealed auction. In September 2012, the museum announced the acquisition of a major 1960 painting by Mark Rothko entitled No. 210/No. 211 (Orange). The abstract expressionist painting had been in a private Swiss collection since the 1960s and had only been shown in public twice.
It is this priority that she returns to when asked about the criticism that she had denuded East Coast institutions of prized works of art to fill what has been described as a vanity project in the middle of nowhere. In 2005, when Walton (who is not involved with Walmart and has never been a board member) purchased Asher B. Durand’s iconic Hudson River School painting Kindred Spirits from the New York Public Library for $35 million, the New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman called it a “sad day…when New Yorkers lost one of the city’s cultural treasures,” and Rebecca Solnit wrote in the Nation, “Art patronage has always been a kind of money-laundering, a pretty public face for fortunes made in uglier ways.” She continued, “Durand’s painting is a touchstone for a set of American ideals that Walmart has been savaging.”
Regarding the origin of the museum’s endowment, the artist Hank Willis Thomas (who is also a Crystal Bridges board member) asks, “Is there a museum where that’s not the case? I can’t think of a scenario where that would not apply, and those complexities are at the core of our nation. None of us chooses our family, and the complexity of that legacy is something I do not envy.”
In the decade since Crystal Bridges opened, it has had 5.6 million visitors, largely thanks to a Walmart Foundation gift that ensures free admission in perpetuity. “I knew we needed it,” Walton says as she strolls through the North Bridge Gallery of the museum. “I didn’t know how bad it would be wanted. We were hoping for 150,000 people a year, and instead, it’s been over a million today.”