Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the first know the news podcast of 2024. I hope you're fully recovered from the holidays and the new year has treated you well so far. I'm Dave Perozic, managing editor of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and your podcast host this week. Did you get a chance to visit Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art last year? If not, there's plenty to look forward to at the museum this year. We're going to talk about that now with a special guest from the museum.
Amanda Horn is senior public relations director for Crystal Bridges and it's sister art space, the momentary. Amanda, thanks very much for taking some time with us today.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: We here at the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette will have a story in this Sunday's WhatsApp section that gives an overview of the 2024 seasons for Crystal Bridges and the momentary.
But Amanda, before we talk about the future, I want to recap the museum's 2023 for just a bit.
What about the museum? And I'm including the momentary when I say the museum, what stands out to you when you think about 2023?
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Oh my gosh. For us, there were so many highlights. I mean, first of all, we saw almost 900,000 visitors across our spaces this year, which is phenomenal whenever we think about where we've come from over these past twelve years as Crystal Bridges and the momentary now soon to be turning four, the momentary really, I think, found a footing with the music program that really took off in 2023 with big concerts like the Roots and Wutang clan and festivals like freshgrass hosting format festival. I mean, these were some really big coups that I think from our perspective and what we've heard feedback in the community really put us on the map also for music and entertainment, as much as we have been known for visual arts experiences, dance and performance, really, we saw a lot of cultural and community events coming across our spaces. I think we just did a calculation of this and there were over, I think, 500 different kinds of unique dance and cultural performances and gatherings across our spaces this year. Phenomenal exhibitions like Annie Leibovitz at work, which just has been such a huge success having her here, having her mentor teens from across northwest Arkansas. We had a teen mentorship program that was happening this past semester. We had over 700 teenagers from across the area participate in that. They all had the opportunity to hear from the world's one of the most preeminent living photographers today, Annie Leibovitz, who kicked off their exploration of creating a portrait and what that meant to them over these last few months, and then being able to work with local photographers of note to bring their work to the fore, and then seeing that work on view in the museum. I mean, those kinds of things for us are just really big wins, right? Whenever we can see all of those pieces come together in the community and see the museum really operate at its best as a gathering place, as a place for people to come together, share ideas, inspire one another, be inspired, and take that back out into their daily lives.
And that is really what we're here to do, to serve the community in all of those ways, and truly to be a place where everyone and anyone, no matter who you are, what walk of life you're from, can find something to do, something to engage with, someone to talk with, something to inspire them. I mean, that is what we are here to do. And to see that service come to life, not only for our community and also for folks visiting our community has really been, I think, what we can be proud of over these last twelve months.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Crystal Bridges is now in its 13th year. It opened in November 2011. Amanda, what are some things patrons can look forward to seeing this year?
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Well, we recently released, and I know that you'll be reporting about this, the whole exhibition, the top line exhibition lineup for 2024. Of course, it's Crystal Bridges and the momentary, and we will have other surprises that will come along which will delight our community in meaningful ways. But the next major exhibition that we are opening at, crystal Bridges, is called exquisite creatures. And that exhibition opens right before spring break here.
It's a dialogue with art, nature and science that really asks the question, what is it about the natural world that calls to us?
For us, Crystal Bridge is one of the things that makes this place so unique in art spaces around the country, and really the world is that we are situated within 120 acres of pristine ozark wilderness, and we have these trails that encourage you to explore the outdoors. And this exhibition really centers around that because the artist Christopher Marley looks at the intricate beauty and diversity of the natural world through three dimensional works. So you see animal specimens, mineral specimens, plant specimens. So we're sort of taking the outside world inside through artistic exploration and then conversely, encouraging visitors to explore the outside world with some prompts through interpretation. So this really gets at that intersection of art and nature, art and science. And we're really excited about the opportunity for our communities and then also for school tours, for school visitors. Last year, we had over 30,000 students come through the doors of the museum on school tours we're looking to hit that to 50 or 60,000 this year. And kicking it off with exquisite creatures is a huge opportunity for integrated steam based thinking and learning to bring students through this space. At the momentary, we recently opened a similar kind of exhibition in the sense that it really invites a critical investigation of the natural world. And that's called enduring Amazon. That's on view right now, but it will stay on view into the new year. So folks still have an opportunity to see that. And I think that is a multimedia based exhibition, photography centric, but also there's video and sound. There are live fish on view in the gallery at the moment, Harry, right now. And so I would encourage everyone to come see enduring Amazon, really immerse themselves in this experience because it is a similar type of exploration. Particularly these artists who are involved in this group show are really thinking a lot about climate change and the impacts that the world is going through from that perspective, particularly looking at the Amazon as a case study here. But being immersed in the wonder and the beauty of the natural world and being able to have permission to look at it more closely and through a different lens is the lens that art invites. And so encourage people to do that. That will also tee us up for, tee people up for exquisite creatures in a similar sort of investigation.
Toward the end of the year at Crystal Bridges in the fall, we open a new outdoor experience called from the clip collective, so folks may know. And we're speaking in this sort of outdoor bucket. Over the last few years, we have brought a nighttime outdoor experience to the community. This last year we had listening forest from artist Raphael Lozeno Hemmer, which we ran for three seasons. It's enormously popular, beautiful, interactive works that interacted with your voice and your heartbeat and other sorts of things like that. This will be a different experience, but again, inviting people to explore the north forest at night, be immersed in sound and wonder, and that's going to be really cool. So it'll be a mesmerizing journey through time and space, which opens in September.
And then we have another major feature exhibition at Crystal Bridges in the fall called knowing the west, which is an original exhibition that our curatorial team has been working on for a number of years. And this really looks at art that created between 1785 and 1922 by native american artists and non native artists. It's called knowing the west. So we're really celebrating the American west, but also investigating know and sort of hoping to upend some of the misconceptions that people may have had or have and hold about the mythological west and sharing some stories from voices that have historically been left out of some of the scholarship around those narratives.
So looking at it as an inclusive, complex place and reflective of the diverse people who contributed to art and life across the west. So those are just a couple of the teases. There's many more which I know you'll get into in your reporting that will happen. Some focus shows a collaboration with the Arkansas Coalition of Marshalles, another indigenous centered exhibition called indigenous expression and new american art. So this is looking at some abstract painters and indigenous artists in conversation with one another in a focus show that we're doing. And then over at the momentary we have new exhibition experiences which will be opening in May, photography centered again, an artist named Christine Potter and Ewal Arisku, which will pull on themes of pop culture and music ballads across these two different exhibitions. And then we kind of conclude the year with a photography exhibition from Photographisca, which is the contemporary museum of photography in New York. And this is called best in show. So it explores the role that furry and feathered friends have played in culture and now how they stand as representations of status, power and loyalty, compassion and companionship, and lots of fun activities planned around pets for that exhibition as well. So that's quite a bit just in the visual arts realm, and I'm happy to talk about other things as well.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: Excellent.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: We'll be right back with Amanda Horn after this brief message.
[00:11:00] Speaker D: If you're enjoying this podcast, consider a newspaper subscription to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette or the River Valley Democrat Gazette. We have a special offer for our podcast listeners, so visit nwanline.com podcast 23 to get started. You can also click the subscribe button on our websites, nwanline.com and rivervalleddemocratgazette.com, or call us at 479-684-5509 and be sure to say that you're a podcast listener. Now back to the show.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Amanda, can you give our listeners a little bit of insight into some of the behind the scenes work at the museum, particularly regarding how certain exhibitions are chosen? What's the decision making process there?
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
Really, whenever exhibitions are, the curatorial team clearly takes the lead on that when it comes to looking at visual arts exhibitions that come through. But it's not decided in a vacuum so many times, like in the case with knowing the west, that is original scholarship. So we know very knowledgeable, seasoned curators on staff at the museum who are specialties in different areas, and in this case, Dr. Mindy Beesaw, who's our curator of american art, worked with Jamie Powell, who is a PhD and a member of the Osage Nation, to collaborate on this exhibition for knowing the west. And so just in that know. And he thought of this idea, thinking of working with a curator as well, who would bring a different perspective. And they have been working on this for a number of years. Right. So that's very involved process. It's like, first of all, determining what kinds of stories it is that need to be told.
They kind of have to, in cases like this, limited in time to understand which narrative is being presented, and then what the thematics of that will be. And then identifying artworks that they know about because they are so seasoned in this space, and looking to collectors and other institutions who have these.
And in cases like this, and this is very often the practice here at crystal Bridges, especially for complex and deeply shows that have a deep scholarship like this one, they will assemble a council of additional voices from across the country, people who come from different places with different lenses and different backgrounds of expertise to weigh in, so that these decisions are not again, being decided through a very narrow lens, but being considerate of the stories that are being presented and the treatment of those narratives. Right. The artists, the objects, the stories that are trying to be told. And then we also, especially for these bigger feature exhibitions, will ask the advice of a community council. So there's the councils that operate sort of at this more.
I'm going to say collegiate, but level, that are really curatorial advisors. And then there are community council groups that here in our community, so that we can understand varying perspectives from our community partners and the folks that we work with a lot in different community groups. So that we can sort of ask questions about the themes that these exhibitions are potentially presenting, and understand ways to make more relevant programming and consider different kinds of programming and topics that people would want to explore based on these exhibitions and things from that perspective. So there's quite a bit of collaboration that goes into sort of the decision making around these shows and how they come together.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: And, of course, you're in the midst of a major construction project there at Crystal Bridge, is adding about 100,000 grounds.
Tell us where that project stands. And do you have an estimate on the completion date?
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So right now, if you come to Crystal bridges, you will see a crane.
You can walk across the bridge or one of the bridges, and you'll look out and you'll be able to see sort of ground being turned and cement going up. So that work is happening. There have been some temporary walls and gallery shifts within the museum that have happened over the course of the last few months as well. The project for that construction expansion is slated to be wrapped by 2026, but I think folks will start to hear a lot more over the coming months of sort of the vision for the expansion, what it means know, and sort of why crystal Bridges is looking to expand in this place and time, the additional focus of craft and indigenous art into our collection and the work that's being done here and opportunities for additional education and community engagement. So all of those stories and the purposes are really taking shape within the museum at this time. And I think there's going to be some exciting dialogues that start to roll out over the next few months, which the community will start to hear about and be able to go along this journey with us.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: And speaking of construction, you've also got a new parking garage there on campus, correct? Just opened?
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Yeah, we do. So, yes, we have a new parking complex that just opened. It's really next door to the emusium. It's at the top of museum way. For folks that have been coming to crystal bridges. You may have noted that over the last bit of time, overflow parking, or if you were coming to the listening forest or other outdoor north forest experience, you would park in the gravel lot. That gravel lot is no longer unless you're an oversized vehicle. But we have this beautiful parking structure that has an awesome new artwork from an art collective called High by Kozo. It's lit up at night, it is modular and stacked and it's on this beautiful proscenium which overlooks the north forest and a ravine. That part is still under construction. So I would say that the parking garage has opened. However, it will open more completely in the spring and there will be a retail experience embedded in there. It will be a gathering place that we will be using for programming, some of that programming in collaboration with the amazium as well. So lots to look forward to in the spring there at the parking structure. So it's not just a parking garage, it will also be another place for opportunity, for engagement. The other part of construction that has happened across 2023 is the momentary, recently went through a number of renovations and so there's been a refreshed momentary experience. So again, if folks haven't been there for a while, they will be really pleasantly surprised whenever they walk in. So we've added pops of color into this beautiful industrial building. We've added soft seating and lots of outlets so you can set up your laptop in the Onyx cafe space, grab your coffee, plug in your computer and sit there and work. And then go into the galleries to be inspired by the art. We have an dramatically expanded retail space as well. The tower bar has had a refreshed entrance. We've added a quanzet hut outside, so there's an additional place to hang out outdoors. It's also Wifi equipped, and on beautiful days, you'll see people sitting out there on picnic tables under the quantit hut. And that's another activation space. Whenever we have our outdoor concerts, as well as festivals at the momentary, which there are a number on the books already of concerts for the momentary in 2024.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Well, we've covered a lot of ground here between last year and this year.
Is there anything else that you wanted to mention that I haven't asked you about?
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah, so I would say right now, again, at the moment, Terry, we are in the throes of our roadhouse indoor music series that's going strong. So just about every week, or every other week right now through the spring, there is a concert, an indoor concert, a variety of types of music happening inside the roadhouse at the momentary.
Different genres, from jazz to americana, sort of things that lead more rock and roll, punk rock.
There's really a variety electronic experiences as well. We have momentous, which is an electronic music festival that's coming up in early March at the momentary. Those tickets are on sale. Freshgrass is coming up in May. So all that to say, we have doubled the number of concerts that are happening at the momentary, both indoor and outdoor, this year. And the best way to stay on top of that is I would encourage people to become a member. If you're a member of the momentary, you get discounts on all of the concert tickets and you get to know first what's happening.
There are also lots of other benefits that come with being a member of the momentary and crystal bridges.
And most importantly, you always know first. You know first what's going on. You know first. If there's big things happening, you get first dibs at tickets and sweet deals that we don't offer to other people, and you just stay informed. The other way is to sign up for our newsletter and of course, follow us on social media, because truly, there's a dizzying amount of activity that is happening at crystal Bridges in the momentary, and there's always something for people to do of a variety. Whatever you're interested in, there is something for you here, and we would love to see you here in 2024.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: That's Amanda Horn with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Thank you so much for your time.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
[00:21:39] Speaker C: Catch lower Joe Hightower's story on Crystal Bridges and the momentary's 2024 season in this weekend's what's up? Section of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Want to share with you a preview of some other stories we have coming your way over the next few days.
Area prosecutors and justice reform advocates have differing views on changes to bail requirements that took effect January 1. Tracy Neal and Ron Wood will have that story.
Beaver Watershed alliance is partnering with three communities in northwest Arkansas to improve source water conditions. City of Elkins, for example, received $95,000 to improve Bunch park. Our reporter Lydia Fletcher is working on that.
Teacher at Haas Hall Academy, Benville recently won the Heartland Chinese Teacher Award.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Education reporter Al Gaspeny will tell us.
[00:22:32] Speaker C: What that means and introduce us to the winner.
Also in Benville, the Trailblazers group has plans to open a tap house and food truck park just off the Razorback greenway on the north side of town. Campbell Roper will have a report on that.
Taking a turn south to the river valley, reporter Thomas Asante revisits the US Marshals Museum to find out how things are going six months into its operation, including whether the museum has seen as many visitors as it had hoped. And Monica Brick tells us about a new half marathon launching this spring in Fort Smith in honor of native son William Darby in Sunday's what's up section. We already talked about the Crystal Bridges piece, but there will be more, including a feature on the new Museum of Eureka Springs Art and previews of the Lost and Harris trio appearing at the Walton Arts center, as well as upcoming performances by Chamber Music of the Ozarks. Sports fans can catch up on all of this weekend's action in high school basketball, as well as the Razorback men's basketball team's SEC opener with Auburn on Saturday.
All this and more will be available to our subscribers on our tablet and smartphone apps and at our websites nwaonline.com and rivervalliedemocratgazette.com.
Thanks as always, for listening. Know the news is a weekly podcast brought to you by the newsrooms of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette and the River Valley Democratic. Again, I'm Dave Perozic, your podcast host this week. Hope you have a great weekend. And until next Friday, so long.
