We got to Crystal Bridges American Art Museum in the late afternoon in time to see Men of Steel Women of Wonder. It was a nice show, several of the pieces – like the Norman Rockwell, above – were terrific but, for me, the biggest and best surprise was a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house.

The Usonian House, in its siting and presentation, reminded me of the Temple of Dendur which the Metropolitan Museum of New York moved, stone by stone, from Eygpt to its special room, overlooking Central Park. As an aside, Egypt gave the Temple to the United States as a thank you for spending more than any other country in helping to save and catalog the hundreds of irreplaceable artifacts that were drowned by the construction of the Aswan Dam (Lydon Johnson was President and we were a different country then). Johnson, in turn, gave the Temple to The Met with the condition that they protect it. The Met built a marvelous glass room to house the Temple, paid for by the Sacklers – or paid for by the addicts they created, depending on your point of view – and the entire display is stunning. I love it! although a little less now that I know about the Sacklers. End aside.

The Usonian House, originally known as the Bachman-Wilson House, was also in an area with flooding problems, in this case, the river the house overlooked now frequently floods. Crystal Bridges bought the house from the, then current owners, the Tarantino family – no relation, BTW – to move to a safer place. They then built a new location for the house by first building a rough-cut, local-stone, retaining wall to make a flat site overlooking a small stream. They dismantled the house, meticulously restored it, and moved it, board by board, to the new site. It is as lovingly placed as Dendur and equally stunning even in the flat light.

I don’t think that Frank Lloyd Wright is the most influential architect of the last century and a half – his branch has sort of dead-ended – but he is the most American and the Usonian houses were his very American try at an inexpensive house for everyman so it is a perfect fit for a Museum of American Art.

Walking around the grounds of Crystal Bridges, I am starting to see the beauty in these bare woods. They look lifeless but the sound of birds is everywhere and the woods feel like they are on the very edge of exploding into spring. The blue water, BTW, is natural and a result dissolved limestone.

We had dinner at a restaurant, Saiwok, that bills itself as Vietnamese street food. It was excellent and Bentonville was more interesting than we expected so we ditched our itinerary. We decided to stay in Bentonville for another night so we could see the town, go see the Museum of Native American History, and go to a mega Walmart. The Museum of Native American History looked unimpressive on the outside but it was terrific inside. On entering, we are greeted by a Mastodon skeleton and displays that showed the probable immigration routes from Asia to the New World, including the latest theories on a coastal route. From there it followed the evolution and differentiation of the various tribes. I’ve seen a lot of Native American artifacts, but the tools and pottery in this museum were a revelation, especially the pottery. I had no idea that it was that acomplished.

The Greater Bentonville area, itself, was equally revelatory, it reminded me of the Santa Clara Valley in the 1950s. There are two downtown-like clusters of buildings, but, mostly, it seems that one story buildings and strip malls go on forever, intermixed with light manufacturing, like a structural plastic factory, and big churches. Including Fayetteville, which we never got to, ten miles to the south, the area has about 500,000 people, all of whom seem to be working for or on something to do with Walmart. This is a company town and there are Walmarts everywhere – we did not see a regular grocery store in three days – plus Walmart corporate buildings. It is the kind of town where you can see a dude on a muddy thousand dollar dirt bike wearing – unironically, I think – a sweatshirt that says: Trinity Bible College.

To be continued.

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