Art, Money, and Snobbery in Bentonville: The Crystal Bridges Museum

Lots of catty ugliness in art circles about the continent's newest major art museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Endowed by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, the museum has an impressive collection and a savvy staff. It is controversial because just by its existence it exposes the hypocrisy of the art world. Art -- I mean the kind of art that gets into museums -- is surrounded by all manner of expectations and myths. Many artists and their fans want art to be some sort of social critique or even revolutionary force. Others want it to preserve aristocratic values in a world of democratic philistinism. What it mainly does, though, is decorate the lives of the fabulously wealthy. It provides a way for newly rich business tycoons to ally themselves with the aristocratic tradition, and to feel that they serve a purpose beyond their own self advancement. If you care about art, you have to admit that the super rich do serve this useful function. Art is not an anarchic force, or a leveller, or an engine of social change. As it exists in our society, it does more to legitimate social distinctions than to undermine them.

Modern art is more an ally of capitalism than its enemy, and the only redistribution it promotes is the moving of money from patrons to artists. I have always suspected that some artists are laughing up their sleeves as they do this, and that some of their works are intended as jokes on the rich fools who buy them. But given the appreciation of works by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and Jeff Koons, it seems that the rich fools have had the last laugh.

What, though, about explicitly revolutionary art? Well, who collects such works? Aristocrats and rich businessmen. From the beginning of the revolutionary period at Lexington and Bunker Hill, part of the elite has always been taken up with revolutionary causes, and this is especially true in aesthetic terms. The people most captivated by revolutionary rhetoric have come more from the elite than the masses. It is this segment, of the elite but at some level against themselves, that consumes revolutionary art. What place does the work of, say, Basquiat have in the political discourse? The real masses have never heard of him. So whatever critique his work poses of the established order is comprehensible only to a narrow elite, and pretty much by definition has no revolutionary effect. The attitude of your average creator of museum installations toward really popular art tells you all you need to know about the actual politics of the art world.

Walmart epitomizes much of what the cultural elite hates, in terms of both capitalist exploitation and tackiness. So of course lots of self-important artists are going to snark about a Walmart-funded art museum. In doing so they are only exposing their ignorance of the economic and social position of museum art in our society. Theirs is an elite bastion, and it can only survive with the financial support of people who have a whole lot of money.

I don't much care. The way I appreciate art has little to do with my political instincts; after all, my favorite art was mostly made for warrior aristocrats or priests of bloody religions. Alice Walton's museum has a great collection in a decent building, and I am perfectly happy to appreciate it on that basis. I hope I get to go someday.

Some works from the collection. Top, Thomas Moran, "Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn," 1862. Above, Tom Uttech (1942- ), "Enassamishhinjijweian," 2009.

Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966), "The Lantern Bearers," 1908.

Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), "Kindred Spirits," 1849.