The Rise of Walm-Art - Should We Be Concerned?

Last year more than four and a half million people visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. That gave nine million eyeballs a likely last look at Kindred Spirits, a transcendentalist Hudson River School masterpiece by Asher Durand. It will be years, maybe decades, before as many viewers see it again. From summer 2005 through this March, it enjoyed prominent place in a great museum in the nation's capital; as of 2009, Kindred Spirits will debut in its new permanent home: Bentonville, Arkansas.
That's the site of Crystal Bridges, a museum of American art founded by Alice Walton - Wal-Mart heiress, self-minted Medici, and new owner of Kindred Spirits. More than a plot in development, Bentonville is the birthplace of Wal-Mart; in fact, Crystal Bridges will share a campus - and by the sounds of things, equal booking - with the Walton 5&10 Museum, a house of tchochkes that commemorates the myth of the megaloretailer.
Bentonville (population: 29,538) is not a place in which many people live, much less visit. Needless to say, flyover states deserve a look at America's art historical tradition, too. But metropolitan areas like Forth Worth, Texas, and St. Louis, Missouri - places people will visit - are more natural and deserving destinations for art. In the end, however, Crystal Bridges's backwater backdrop is the least of reasons to grumble over the rapid rise of the Wal-Mart collection. Walton will no doubt drape these works in the flag and march them to an American theme - one that will be, at best, superficial, and at worst, jingoistic. Either way, the museum stands to do a disservice to the works: Walton collects art with the same disregard for fair practices and competition that Wal-Mart shows in the retail sector.
There's almost no problem that the Wal-Mart fortune can't overcome. When the New York Public Library, home to the Durand landscape since 1904 (an appropriate, native, New England vista for the piece), put the painting up for sale in 2005 to relieve financial strains, Walton edged out both the National Gallery and the Met. (In a curious turn, she relied on the veteran advice of John Wilmerding, a National Gallery of Art trustee, to seal the deal. The National Gallery has never answered about that conflict of interest.) The sale price? Approximately $35m - on which Walton won't pay state sales tax, thanks to an act passed by the Arkansas state legislature that exempts state museums within the highest financial bracket. Which is to say, Crystal Bridges alone: the legislation was so narrowly tailored as to benefit only Walton.
(If there's anyone the state of Arkansas owes zero favors, it's Walton. After all, as the AFL-CIO notes, the $35m Walton paid for Kindred Spirits equals more than two years' worth of outlays the state pays for Wal-Mart employees living on public assistance.)
Whereas the Wal-Mart heiress benefits from sweetheart deals with Arkansas, groups that try to keep their native works close to home are faced with bitter decisions. These are hardly mom-and-pop outfits, either. Last year, it took the combined efforts of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to prevent Walton from acquiring Thomas Eakins's The Gross Clinic, another painting widely acknowledged as an American masterpiece. The Gross Clinic is as Philly as the cheesesteak: The 1875 painting shows Samuel Gross, a renowned Philadelphia surgeon, lecturing to students as he operates on a patient under chloroform. Thomas Jefferson University's medical college purchased the painting just three years after its completion, parting with it 129 years later, also citing financial distress.
In December 2006, at the eleventh hour of a frantic six-week fundraising effort , the Philadelphia museums acting in tandem were able to ante up the coin: $68m. Half of this came in the form of a late offer by Wachovia to finance the shortfall. It wasn't known at the time, though, that the museums had also robbed Peter to pay Paul: the Academy announced in February that it had sold Eakins's The Cello Player for an undisclosed price to a secret buyer. "In essence, the academy decided to surrender the best Eakins picture it owned for a half-interest in an even better one," wrote Edward Sozanski, art critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In a telling revelation, Philadelphia Museum of Art director Anne d'Harnoncourt bragged at one point that the campaign had attracted donations from every state in the nation. It takes a village when art prices across genres and eras soar to eight- and nine-figure record highs, and one of the wealthiest individuals in the world is prowling the market. For Philadelphia's sake, the village had better rally again, and quickly: Thomas Jefferson University just announced that it plans to hock two more Eakins.
Assuming Walton scoops up both, it will be a blow to Philadelphia, one struck in the name of American art. Consider it a fait accompli: It's unlikely that all 50 states, a major bank, two museums, and millions in private donations will come together to stymie Walton again.
Jeffrey Goldberg writes in the New Yorker that Wal-Mart has hired professional PR progressives to boost its reputation on labor practices. Whatever Crystal Bridges is, it can't be counted with that effort; Walton risks angering everyday Americans by making bids for the objects that give their cities and regions status and soul. Nor is the big-box museum a Wal-Mart invention: Crystal Bridges fits the proud tradition built by tycoons who enjoyed the uniquely self-aggrandizing philanthropy that is collecting and showing art. Yet Walton's models - the Carnegies and Mellons of art history - built art collections first; the big-box showrooms to house them came later.
There are far worse fates for American art than to be hung in a public museum - especially one designed by starchitect Moshe Safdie. But nothing is worse for American art history than Wal-Mart. The corporate bully is using its incredible market wedge - heavily subsidized by public dollars - to buy out proud local traditions. Sound familiar?