BENTONVILLE — Barbara Lenhardt has visions of the museum store at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art offering one-of-akind items such as jewelry creations by regional craftsmen and keepsakes carved from wood gathered on the museum’s campus.
As the museum’s retail operations manager, Lenhardt expects the store will have the standard souvenirs found at other museums: postcards and magnets imprinted with reproductions of Crystal Bridges’ collections. Visitors might find umbrellas, neckties and scarves, too.
But her hope is that unique products such as walking sticks or pens crafted from local materials will not only make her shop a “destination store” but provide another tie-in for the museum’s theme of art intersecting with nature.
Even the store’s design will have an organic feel, she pointed out during a national media tour Wednesday, from the mushroom-inspired interior design to the “green roof.”
“We’re not going to be like anybody else,” Lenhardt said.
She also plans to find artisans in Arkansas and the six“touch states” bordering it who produce special jewelry and crafts that will give the store added local flavor.
The museum, founded and backed primarily by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. heiress Alice Walton, is to open Nov. 11 in downtown Bentonville.
The museum will consist of a “series of eight pavilions nestled around two springfed ponds” on a 7-acre campus on 120 forested acres, according to press materials. The museum store will be among the buildings, in a slightly curved 3,000-squarefoot space.
Aside from Lenhardt’s creative aspirations for its merchandise, she plans for the store to be more than just a place to buy things.
There will be a section for children’s books and some soft seating so youngsters will have a place to read, she said. Also, there will be an art table so little ones can experiment.
Museum off icials announced Lenhardt as the museum’s retail operations manager March 25, saying she had first joined the staff Feb. 21.
She came from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, where she had worked since 2004 as retail sales and product development manager. She arrived at Crystal Bridges with 22 years of experience in retail management, having operated her own store, Victorian Treasures in Warwick, N.Y., from 1988 to 2003.
Lenhardt estimates she will supervise a paid staff of six to eight people as well as some museum volunteers.
During a September site tour, Crystal Bridges announced that the museum store’s design would be handled by Marlon Blackwell, head of architecture at the University of Arkansas’ Fay Jones School of Architecture and owner of Marlon Blackwell Architect of Fayetteville.
He described his design as working from within the curved architecture of Crystal Bridges’ primary architect, Moshe Safdie and Associates of Boston.
Blackwell has described the store as having a suspended ceiling and back wall made of 280 plywood ribs constructed from Arkansasharvested cherry, with his inspiration coming from the underside of a mushroom, its spore-bearing gills known as the lamella.
The roof of the museum store will be used to grow a variety of plants, such as grass, flowers, vegetables or indigenous greenery.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 05/06/2011