New York, LA … Bentonville? America’s most unlikely city of culture (2024)

It’s just after 3am, and I’m wide awake. My body clock is stuck somewhere over the Pacific and what nightlife there is in Bentonville, Arkansas (population 50,000) evaporated hours ago. Fortunately, there’s still plenty to keep me occupied, even at this hour.

Everything in this small town revolves around art, including the 21c Museum Hotel. My accommodation doubles as a 24-hour contemporary gallery, and the motto of “no blank walls” even extends to the gym, where a corpulent fibreglass Batman hovers above the treadmills.

So instead of staring at my bedroom ceiling, I spend the witching hour walking through eight gallery spaces filled with modern tableaux of BLM activists, skeletal etchings created from thousands of fine cuts on paper and a multicoloured grotto filled with colourful plastic flowers, floral dresses and fluffy toys.

Just before the sun rises, I head to the woods at the edge of town where one of light artist James Turrell’s Skyspaces is bathed in red, green and shimmering gold light. Sitting down inside, I watch the sky slowly change colour through a circular hole in the roof until I feel like I’m looking out at the world from inside a UFO.

By the time I leave this disorienting twilight zone, a few joggers have joined me on the path back to Bentonville’s town square, where a courthouse draped in red, white and blue bunting looks across to the original Walton’s store. This is the foundation stone of the Walmart empire but while founder Sam Walton dedicated his life to building the US’ largest retailer, his daughter Alice has pursued a different dream. She wanted to build a world-class art museum in the woods of Northwest Arkansas.

Opened in 2011, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is just a 10-minute walk from the town square. Its location in a thickly wooded ravine means it is completely hidden from the outside world.

From above, it looks like a pair of copper-coloured armadillos stretching over a pond. The museum took five years to build because it sits atop a gushing creek that pushes 2 million litres of water through the structure every day.

Rather than stretching skyward, Israeli architect Moshe Safdie’s design embraces the horizontality beloved of Frank Lloyd Wright, and it’s a sign of the museum’s ambition to take art off the walls that the 120-acre grounds include one of Wright’s Usonian homes as well as an ambitious outdoor architecture exhibition. Just below that, a flash of blue turns out to be a forest of Dale Chihuly’s glass reeds springing from a stone creek bed to perfectly encapsulate Crystal Bridge’s mission of integrating art, architecture and the natural environment.

“Our aim is not to cover the history of American Art,” curator Mindy Besaw explains as we walk through the gallery. “We tell American stories, which allows for a lot more nuance.” The museum’s remit extends beyond US-born artists to include the ideas, perspectives and stories that have influenced American art, so Mexican modernists, Japanese futurists and homegrown innovators all have a place alongside the “pictures of an idealised past and portraits in gilt frames.”

And rather than sitting in silos, the works are intentionally placed in dialogue with each other. In one of the first galleries, Norman Rockwell’s Rosie The Riveter munches a ham sandwich next to a beaded Winnebago bandolier that uses the Stars & Stripes motif and a wood carving by a self-taught artist interrogating the nation’s complicity in the slave trade.

Because the early American, modern and contemporary galleries are housed in separate buildings, the artworks are regularly broken up with “palate cleansers”. These glass-walled walkways dissolve the boundaries between inside and outside and ensure that I never forget the Ozark wilderness behind the walls.

Five miles of trails where bright purple irises compete for my attention with works like Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden make it clear that the dappled beach and oak forest are also part of the gallery.

The explosion of art flows over into Bentonville. Murals and buzzing neon signs cover many of the walls, and the yoga mats at Blake Street House wellness centre are thoughtfully laid out around more than 100 works.

Even the local speakeasy is in on the act. The basil and bourbon co*cktail at Lady Slipper does its bit to stave off my jet lag, but it’s Obama portraitist Kehinde Wiley’s monumental painting of a young man astride a rampant horse that really captures my attention. It’s a significant step up from the decorations at most small-town bars. But then, Bentonville is far from your average small town.

THE DETAILS

EAT + DRINK
Lady Slipper (138 SW 2nd St, Bentonville) is open for co*cktails and share plates from Tuesday to Saturday. See ladyslippernwa.com

STAY
21c Museum Hotel Bentonville has eight gallery spaces downstairs and 104 hotel rooms with artworks that start from $US312 ($480) a night. See 21cmuseumhotels.com/bentonville

The writer travelled with assistance from Brand USA and 21c Museum Hotels.

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