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Bartlesville, Oklahoma
There's nothing like finding gold within the rocks hard and cold, I'm so surprised to find more, always surprised to find more
We’re all the way out in Bartlesville, Oklahoma to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower, despite the crazy heat (my car topped off at 118 degrees). The Price Tower is Wright's only tall building (19 stories) and was designed as mixed use- two story high apartments where the vertical louvers are and offices where the horizontal ones are.
What makes the Price Tower special is not only that it is a Frank Lloyd Wright tower, but also that it is a hotel. Guests get amazing duplex rooms, a nice continental breakfast, and free tickets for the building tour on the day you arrive. The views from my room across Oklahoma were impressive, even though I had to keep the curtains closed during the day to protect against that crazy heat.
At the Price Tower duplex hotel rooms, there is a living area downstairs and a sleeping area on the loft upstairs, Between was an open stair, painted Frank Lloyd Wright Cherokee Red, whose stair treads were designed on a 45 degree angle and often felt like a deathtrap. They were ok to walk up, but walking down them was an acquired skill that you just aren’t going to learn in a single overnight stay.
This is Crystal Bridges, a brand new museum in Bentonville, a small town in Northwestern Arkansas that just happens to be the home of the Walton (as in Walmart) family. The museum was built with Walmart money, is free to visit and (far and away) is the nicest thing in that part of Arkansas.
The Crystal Bridges pictures start with an overview (literally) of the museum complex.
The museum was designed by Moshe Safdie and consists of a series of buildings that act as bridges and/or surround a man made lake. The art extends into the landscape, with sculptures scattered throughout several trails, although the excessive heat made those trails seem somewhat less appealing than they normally might be.
The museum does in fact have art. The galleries focus exclusively on American art, starting at the dawn of the republic and progressing straight through to current, contemporary art, organized (roughly) chronologically. The collection itself is... ok... not exceptional but it does have its moments.
When you get away from the actual Crystal Bridges themselves, there are a few pathways around the area that lead to artwork, most noatbly to “The Way of Color,” a James Turrell skyspace that I had all to myself.
Ground zero of the Walmart empire, this is Walmart store #000000001. The original building was turned into a Walmart museum, a corporate propaganda center that now has Sam Walton's original office and a video that shows how Walmart always hires diverse (non union) employees. Other than the museum, downtown Bentonville is pretty dead, another side effect in small downtowns everywhere of Sam Walton's small business killing empire.
