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May 13, 2005
Why I'm all in favor of Alice Walton's new museum
I've been thinking about new museums since I blogged about the sale of Asher B. Durand's "Kindred Spirits" to Alice Walton.
Without billionaires like Miss Walton all the world's art will be sucked down by the irresistable maw of museums like the Met, the National Gallery, and (the darkest maw of them all) the Getty. With her kind of money she'll create another eddy in the stream -- an eddy which will suck down appreciable amounts of specifically American art, making for a kind of museum I'll want to visit someday but won't need to travel to specifically (though, since it will be in Bentonville, AR, I guess I will have to travel specifically to it -- I've never had reason to pass through the northeast corner of Arkansas before).
Nevertheless, if you want to talk about museums that already have too much art to show? See the list above. Feel free to add others.
I wonder if she's tried to buy the Terra collection, now that it's lost a permanent home? They have their whole Terra Foundation collection available online, which was an interesting solution to having to shut the building down.
They loan a rotating selection to the Art Institute and they still have a museum in Giverny to show Europeans that there is such a thing as American art. I've never understood why the Giverny museum is open only from April through September -- maybe it says something about actual attendence rates at museums in France? I don't know.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at May 13, 2005 11:54 AM