Art and Design Commons^™

Framing Cultural Capitalism: William Wilson Corcoran And Alice Walton As Patrons Of The American Art Museum, Kelsey E. Tyler

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In 2011, Alice Walton opened what is now considered to be among the most important American art collections in the country, in a museum called Crystal Bridges, in Bentonville, Arkansas. What is remarkable is not only the exorbitant amount of money spent to open the museum - over $800 million dollars - but also that she was the primary financier. William Wilson Corcoran, a mid-nineteenth-century banker, in many ways is a better comparison than Morgan or Gardner, as like Walton he intended to found a museum dedicated specifically to American art. His museum, which he hoped would become a national …