Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art announced Friday a round of acquisitions ranging from a 19th-century portrait by James McNeill Whistler to a commissioned sculpture designed by the creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
Margi Conrads, director of curatorial affairs, said the five works of art "help shape the fabric" of the museum's national identity. The pieces will debut in the Bentonville museum's permanent galleries throughout September. They are: The Chelsea Girl, an 1884 painting by Whistler; Thomas Eakins' painting of Archbishop James Frederick Wood, 1877; Florida Mexicana, a 1936 painting by Alfredo Ramos Martinez; Jeffrey Gibson's What We Want, What We Need (2014) and Maya Lin's Silver upper White River, a sculpture completed this year from recycled silver.
Acquisition prices were not released by the museum.
"It's a wonderful group of works that spans from the 19th century ... to now. It really speaks to the breadth and depth of the collection that we're building," Conrads said. "They are, first and foremost, excellent examples of each artist's work."
Whistler's portrait is not his most well-known work, that distinction is reserved for Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, known as Whistler's Mother; but The Chelsea Girl is considered a good representation of the artist's painting style. Much of his work focused on upper-class clients and friends, so the portrait of a working class English girl is considered a rarity.
A 2014 ArtNews.com feature on Whistler described the artist as the "original art star" and said his works often command between $200,000 and $800,000. His significant works are rarely available for purchase, the article said, noting that his 1864 painting Chelsea in Ice sold for $2.6 million and is now featured at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine.
"We feel very fortunate to bring this into the collection," Conrads said. "These full-sized, painted portraits are extremely rare."
Lin's Silver Upper White River isn't the only commissioned artwork featured at Crystal Bridges, but curator Chad Alligood described the sculpture as "a rare and special thing." The piece is an aerial view of a stretch of the White River, which stretches more than 772 miles in Arkansas and Missouri.
Much of Lin's current work focuses on human interaction with nature, but she first gained recognition for designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Lin was still in school studying architecture when her design was selected for the monument.
Crystal Bridges will feature Lin as part of a public keynote lecture Oct. 19. A screening of the Academy Award-winning documentary Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision on Maya Lin will be screened Oct. 16.
Lin's sculpture is true to Crystal Bridges' mission of finding an intersection of art, nature and architecture, Alligood said. Silver Upper White River is part of a series of river sculptures created by Lin, including the Yangtze River in China; the Missouri River, commissioned by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo.; and the Colorado River, on view in the Aria resort in Las Vegas.
"We really are the nexuses of those three things: art, nature and architecture, So the opportunity was right," Alligood said. "It's a really exciting moment and the waterway has such a long history for Northwest Arkansas and the region more broadly. To commemorate it and transform it into this piece of art is a really special thing."
Both Whistler and Lin, if not household names, have created works familiar to the general public. Less well-known, Conrads said, is the work of Eakins, whose life-size portrait of the first archbishop of Philadelphia, James Frederick Wood, was purchased through a dealer from a seminary.
Similar portraits of archbishops painted by Eakins over a 25-year span are on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Eakins painted 14 portraits of Catholic clergy and his most well-known work, Gross Clinic, sold for $68 million in 2006.
"Often works are somewhat hidden from public knowledge and enjoyment and understanding," Conrads said. "Over several decades these works have come out of the seminary's hands into the possibility of public acquisition."
Florida Mexicana was created in 1936 by Ramos Martinez. It depicts an indigenous Mexican woman carrying a bowl of flowers.
Gibson's work, created in 2014, is a nod to his Choctaw and Cherokee heritage. He adorned a punching bag with items including glass beads, copper jingles and steel chains. The juxtaposition of the punching bag and image of a fighter with the delicate handwork needed to add the beads and jingles is "fascinating," Conrads said.
It's the lesser known works that Conrads said she was most excited about sharing with the 500,000 annual visitors the museum has hosted since it opened almost four years ago. Conrads said the museum is pleased to share works from a diverse group of artists with different ethnic backgrounds.
"Particularly with Gibson and Ramos Martinez, for our increasingly diverse audiences who have maybe not been seeing themselves or their culture represented on our walls or our floors, they have a chance to perhaps feel at home in these pieces," Conrads said. "Our vision and our mission are dedicated to making art accessible to all. It is something that even in our young life we work hard at it."
Crystal Bridges Executive Director Rod Bigelow described the acquisitions as a "kaleidoscope of artistic excellence."
"They diversify our collection," Bigelow said in a news release, "broaden our understanding of the American experience, and help foster important conversations among our visitors and community."
Business on 09/12/2015