An Art Boom in Arkansas

Published on 26th January 2017 Written for Artinfo.com

An Art Boom in Arkansas: 21c Museum Hotel Opens in Bentonville

TEXT: Lori Fredrickson

On first sight, Bentonville, Arkansas, would not seem a likely location for a burgeoning art hub. Tucked within the Ozarks at a population of 36,000, the city has been most known in the past as the founding location — and current corporate center — of Walmart; visitors arriving to the nearby regional airport will be treated to views of cornfields and pastoral farmhouses on the 20-minute drive to its downtown square, which is surrounded by a few local restaurants, shops, and Sam Walton's original five-and-dime. While picturesque, Bentonville is not a location where you would expect to find, say, a Renzo Piano-designed museum monolith or a James Turrell Skyspace.

But since 2011, the city has been home to both, thanks to the opening of Walmart heiress Alice Walton's major new museum Crystal Bridges. With assets estimated at over $500 million, and boasting an impressive collection of American arts, Crystal Bridges has been a draw to visitors throughout the surrounding state regions. And now it's been joined by another unlikely new museum project, the Bentonville 21c Museum Hotel.

The latest in a small boutique line launched in Louisville, Kentucky by philanthropists Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown, 21c integrates art with hospitality in an unusual new way. It hosts a contemporary museum with revolving exhibitions and public programming on its ground floor, while also offering three upper levels of designer hotel rooms and a downstairs restaurant and nightclub, The Hive.

Rest assured that this is no mere art-themed hotel. 21c is an impressive new museum, and one that easily rivals many similarly-sized contemporary arts spaces in New York and L.A. Designed by architect Deborah Berke, nearly a quarter of the building's space is dedicated solely to art viewing, encompassing 12,000 square feet of its ground-floor level. Permanent installations include works by rising art stars like Alexandre Arrechea; works in the revolving exhibitions, culled from Wilson and Lee Brown's wide-ranging personal collection, are thoughtfully curated around significant themes by Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites.

21c's opening exhibition, aptly, is titled “Hybid.” Works include South African photographer Pieter Hugo's urban-meets-wild Hyena Men and his documentary studies of Ghanaian technology dumping ground sites; Sarah Garzoni's sinister, anthropormophic taxidermied sculptures of at-odds species; and Marcus Coates' 14-screen video installation of humans performing menial tasks to the soundtrack of various chirping songbirds.

“I chose 'Hybrid' as the opening theme because it touches on so many of the conversations we're having in contemporary art: The dialogue between established and evolving, and the rate at which our world is changing,” Stites explained, during a conversation on opening-day weekend.

When asked whether this theme was chosen partly in reference to 21c's unique status as a museum, Stites said, “There is certainly a correlation there. 21c is certainly a form of hybrid, and one can also argue that Bentonville itself is undergoing a unique form of hybridization.” But, she added, “These are symptomatic of the ways in which the world is changing and the pace at which things are changing. It's all part of the same dialogue.”

As a hybrid, 21c adds to that conversation with polish and flair. Wilson and Lee Brown designed their original location as a means of bringing arts to the Louisville community, which the Bentonville location encourages also: The ground-floor space is open to the public on a walk-in basis, 24 hours a day, with regular artist lectures and discussions. Visitors to The Hive are treated to a smaller, restaurant-centric exhibition. In the foyer, a small, closed-in courtyard contains the hotel's possibly most-relevant installation: The “Tree of Forty Fruit” by Sam Van Aken, a tree grafted to bear 40 different types of fruit.

And for hotel guests, the experience is even more immersive: It's literally a night at the museum. Upper floors contain permanent installations, including wallpaper created from artists such as Mattia Bonnetti and Chris Doyle. Gymgoers will be surprised to find Virginie Barré's “Fat Bat,” a massive-ceiling-suspended Batman sculpture, lurking over the treadmills. In the daytime, Crystal Bridges is accessible via a short nearby nature hike; in the evening, visitors can hang out in the outside courtyard with Alexandre Arrechea's multi-hooped basketball installation “Orange Tree.”

The museum adds a thoughtful art experience for Bentonville's new landscape, but also a playful one. Possibly the most iconic installation at 21c is the chain's most signature one, a series of four-foot high penguin sculptures by Cracking Art Group that Lee Wilson and Brown have commissioned for all their hotels in different colors, here in neon green. Several lurk on the roof, guarding the entrance like mild-mannered gargoyles: Others in the interior of the museum tend to be more mobile. Nighttime guests will learn not to be surprised to find one riding with them on the elevator, or greeting them outside their room door in the morning. Like many of its visitors, 21c's art loves to travel.