BENTONVILLE — Kathryn Roberts hopes to one day be remembered for her work with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
In January, Roberts became the museum’s first director of member and guest services. She had been living and working in Atlanta since 1983, but the opportunity to get in on the ground floor at Crystal Bridges was too good to pass up.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a part of something great and leave a wonderful legacy,” Roberts said. “Chances like this don’t come along very often, creating a world-class museum from scratch.”
The museum expects 150,000 to 300,000 visitors each year and hundreds of patrons a day and will be key in expanding the leisure and hospitality job sectors in Northwest Arkansas.
Rhonda Houser, the museum’s director of human resources, said interest in jobs at the museum has been high, with talented candidates from around the United States — and a handful from overseas — flooding Crystal Bridges’ offices with applications.
“We’ve gotten a tremendous response,” Houser said. “I’d say, on average, we receive 100 resumes per position, sometimes even more.”
Crystal Bridges currently has 116 full-time employees, she said. Of those 116 staff members, 35 were out-of-state hires, while 81 came from Arkansas.
“Most of those would be from Northwest Arkansas,” Houser said. “With that total of 116, we’re moving toward our approximate [eventual] number of staff, which would be 130.”
Houser added that the 116 full-time employees does not include security hires.
It is standard museum practice to not release that number, she said.
RELOCATING TO AREA
Roberts had the job experience that is characteristic of so many of Crystal Bridges’ hires.
She had been working at museums in Atlanta for 12 years, and had been the development manager at the city’s High Museum of Art since 2006. Before that, she worked at its Fernbank Museum of Natural History, first as manager of membership guilds then as director of donor relations.
She first became aware of Crystal Bridges more than four years ago, when its former executive director, Bob Workman, gave a presentation at the High Museum.
“He showed us photos of the architect’s models, and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s really fascinating,’” Roberts recalled.
After seeing the presentation, Roberts continued to monitor developments at Crystal Bridges from afar, and when the position of director of member and guest services opened in 2010, she applied. She had two interviews, the first on Skype (video phone call by computer) and then a second, in-person, interview in Bentonville in mid-December. Less than a week later, Crystal Bridges offered her the job.
Since taking the position and moving to Rogers, Roberts has been busy. Her primary responsibility has been creating a membership program and building a staff.
She said she has received numerous phone calls, “from people in Texas and down the street,” asking how a person can become a member.
At the same time, Roberts has been working with other staff members to develop policies and procedures — everything from what to put on signs, to what the plan will be for wet umbrellas.
In this regard, having a veteran staff allows employees to more smoothly build the museum, policy by policy.
“I feel really good about the collegial atmosphere here, and also by the fact that not everyone on staff has worked at museums,” Roberts said. “They’ve brought together a pool of talented individuals from a variety of industries and put them together in an environment in which you feel comfortable sharing ideas.
“You can’t say, ‘We haven’t done it that way,’ because we haven’t done it any way. We’re creating one.”
A NEW WORLD
Blake Foster is one of those employees who had no museum experience.
A security supervisor at Crystal Bridges, Foster spent 20 years working with the law enforcement department of Federal Reserve banks.
After he got out of the Marine Corps in 1991, Foster spent a decade working for the Federal Reserve bank in his native Little Rock. Then he moved to Miami and worked at the Federal Reserve bank there until retiring in November.
Later that month, Foster moved to Centerton when his wife, Veronika, began working for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
“I wasn’t really looking to get back to work, but I ran across this position for a security supervisor at Crystal Bridges, and museums had always intrigued me,” Foster said. “I approached the director of security, Geoff Goodrich, and after we met and talked, I thought this would be a great opportunity.”
Foster began working for Crystal Bridges in March. As is the case with all other departments, building the security staff is a work in progress.
Employees fall into one of three categories: art and education, museum relations, and operations and administration.
“It’s going to be quite big,” Foster said of the security team. “We need external officers, internal officers, a control-room staff.”
The museum has partnered with a security firm to fill out its security staff, but also has publicly listed openings.
“We use a number of different strategies,” Houser said of identifying talent. “We always post positions on our website. We have gone out to a number of job fairs this spring in order to ensure the local community knows we’re here, that we’re eager to visit with them and see if there’s a fit.”
Foster said “it’s been a very smooth transition” to the museum world. His background with the Federal Reserve has helped him craft security procedures — dealing with everything from fires to tornadoes to numerous other possible emergencies.
At the same time, he’s been receiving a crash course in art. Once the museum opens, Foster frequently will be out on the floor, and he knows that he’ll be asked questions by visitors that have less to do with evacuation procedures and more to do with an artist’s brush strokes.
The museum has held “Art 101” classes for staff members who come from different backgrounds. Executive Director Don Bacigalupi and Chief Curator Chris Crosman presented some of the sessions, Houser said, and she added that these courses may be repeated in the future as new staff joins the museum.
“One thing we’re focused on is having great customer service, an open, warm environment for families and kids,” Foster said. “I’m not going to be affixed to my desk. Part of my job requirement is that I’ve got to be able to answer questions and know what I’m talking about.”
OUTER IMPACT
Not every job created by Crystal Bridges is at the museum itself.
In fact, while the museum may ultimately be responsible for hundreds of new jobs in Bentonville, just a portion of those will be at the museum.
“I don’t know that you can project what that number would be, but it’s certainly a positive,” said Ed Clifford, president and chief executive officer of the Bentonville/Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce. “I don’t know of a city in the world that wouldn’t have bid for [Crystal Bridges], and it was the Walton family’s decision to put it here. It’s a pretty great deal for us.”
The opening of Crystal Bridges will mean visitors are coming to Bentonville. With those visitors comes a greater demand for things like restaurants and hotels.
Without Crystal Bridges, it’s unlikely that 21c Museum Hotels would be planning to build a hotel in Bentonville, said company Vice Chairman Craig Greenberg of Louisville, Ky. He said that when it is open, the luxury hotel will provide approximately 160 jobs, the majority of them full-time.
Construction on the hotel began earlier this fall and the facility should open in 2012. It is located in downtown Bentonville, just off the Square, putting it within walking distance of the museum.
“Every job, all 160, will live in and around Bentonville, and we hope to hire local folks,” Greenberg said. “There might be certain positions that we recruit someone to Bentonville, but even if they’re recruited, they’ll all live around Bentonville. “We’ll probably start hiring six-eight months out [from the opening]. We’ll hire the general manager, executive chef and director of sales, and the bulk of the hiring will come two-three months out.”
The chamber estimates 250,000 people will visit Crystal Bridges annually, and if that happens, additional jobs are sure to be created. Already, Clifford said, the Wal-Mart Visitors Center on the Square has tripled its size and added staff.
Ultimately, Crystal Bridges doesn’t mean more jobs just at the museum, or even just in Bentonville. It means more jobs for the entire region.
“We haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg,” Clifford said. “This will put a tremendous strain on the infrastructure we have in place right now. We know, for example, that hotels here are running at 50-60 percent capacity, but we expect them to be running much stronger than that [after the museum opens].
“I think this thing rolls all the way downhill to Fayetteville. It’s not just a Bentonville deal.”
This article was previously published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on July 13, 2011.