Crystal Bridges Just Got a 114,000-Square-Foot Glow-Up

Summary

• Crystal Bridges is opening a massive 114,000-square-foot expansion this weekend in Bentonville, Arkansas, designed by Safdie Architects
• The new galleries debut with a Keith Haring 3D retrospective and Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room14

Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas is unveiling its Safdie Architects expansion this weekend, finally opening the doors to its long-awaited expansion on June 6 and 7. Designed by Safdie Architects, the 114,000-square-foot addition completes the building’s original circulation into a figure-eight across two stream-fed ponds, introduces a north entrance and wraps the whole establishment in exposed southern yellow pine, copper cladding and floor-to-ceiling glass that looks out over 134 acres of Ozark woodland.

The first big swing in the new temporary exhibition space is Keith Haring in 3D, also opening June 6. It’s the first show to focus exclusively on Haring’s three-dimensional output, pulling together sculptures, totems, masks, skateboards, boomboxes, clothing, paintings, drawings and a 1963 Buick Special courtesy of Cart Dept‘s Larry Warsh. The new space gives Crystal Bridges the capacity to run multiple temporary shows simultaneously which wasn’t really possible before.

The new Contemporary American Art Gallery features a diverse range of works by today’s leading artists across the global art sector. Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Room” is in there. So is Teresita Fernández’s “Manigua (Mirror).” The two galleries connect via a bridge that doubles as display space for sculpture, pottery and glassware, with a 40-seat café called Quartz + Honey perched above the surrounding landscape, ponds, gardens and trails.

On the collection side, nearly every work in the museum was moved and reinstalled as part of the reimagining. Visitors can now access close to 600 works from the permanent collection of over 4,100, with roughly 200 pieces on view for the first time. Indigenous art and craft objects anchor every gallery, headlined by Kent Monkman’s Saving the Newcomers. There are also dozens of new artist commissions completed over the last two years.

The creative learning Hub adds educational spaces, artist-in-residence studios, a digital art studio, a ceramics studio, and community gathering areas, all under the same roof. Also currently on view through the end of July: America 250: Common Threads, which spans 1776 to today and includes Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 American flag plus an early engraving of the Declaration of Independence.

“The inauguration of this second phase marks the culmination of a two-decade collaboration—an evolving dialogue between architect, patron, and institution—that has shaped not only a building, but a shared vision for what a museum can be. Beyond broadening its program, the expansion extends and deepens the museum’s connection to nature—embedding new spaces for community, learning, and the display of art within an architectural language shaped by the region’s terrain,” said Moshe Safdie, founding partner of Safdie Architects. “We have been delighted by the public’s response to the integration of art and nature and look forward to visitors experiencing the expanded museum.”

Crystal Bridges
600 Museum Way
Bentonville, AR 72712