Show Me Missouri: Bentonville, Arkansas (6.14.24)

Dave and I visited the second LDS temple of our Missouri trip on June 15, 2024.  We drove south to Bentonville, Arkansas, where the temple had been dedicated by Elder David Bednar just a few months before.  Elder Bednar, now an apostle, was a business professor for many years in Arkansas and so has a special love for the state and its people.

The Bentonville temple is a smaller temple, but decorated particularly beautifully, in medium shades of blue and green.  

Each temple has a distinctive color scheme, from the colonial blues and reds of the Richmond, Virginia, temple to the purple and burnt orange of a Southern Utah dawn in the Red Cliffs, Utah temple in St George.  Dave and I had a 7:30 a.m. endowment appointment at the Red Cliffs temple, and had just experienced the dawn sky streaked with purple and orange before we entered the temple.  We then found the temple decorated in the same colors!

Bentonville is located in the northwestern corner of Arkansas, near Missouri and Oklahoma.  

We got just a taste of its lush Ozarks landscape as we drove south from Branson.  We will have to return to enjoy sights like this waterfall. 

Downtown Bentonville is picturesque.  We walked through the downtown square, ate a nouveau Mexican lunch at a stylish cafe, and then searched for the Walmart Museum.  Sam Walton, who created Walmart, comes from Arkansas, and Bentonville is now the headquarters for Walmart. 

The Walmart Museum was closed for renovation, but a satellite museum, including a few of the treasures, was open.

The highlight was the life-size hologram of Sam Walton.  A curator asked Sam questions and he answered them, as if he were alive!

 

Our last stop of the day was at the new Crystal Bridges American Art Museum.  We could have spent the entire day there, since the property included not only the artfully designed museum, but also miles of trails through woods and gardens. We had only an hour, and so concentrated on the paintings.

There were works by early American artists, such as this painting by Gilbert Stuart.

This painting looks like a work by John Sargent, but it is actually by Robert Henri, the early 20th century teacher of my favorite Utah painter, Minerva Teichert.

And there were many modern works.  I love all the paintings by Kinde Wiley, as he places black men and women within classical backgrounds.

One gallery focused on paintings by or featuring minority women--black, Hispanic, Asian.

I bought a book about the collection, so I can savor the art slowly and thoughtfully at home.