In the Ozarks, Wood Floors Grace a Cultural Bastion With Walmart Ties

Monticello, Ark.-based Maxwell Hardwood Flooring supplied just over 52,000 square feet of clear red oak for the gallery spaces at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, located in Bentonville, Ark.

Crystal Bridges resides in a ravine about a mile from downtown Bentonville, home to Sam Walton's original Five and Dime store. Surrounding its half dozen connected pavilions are ponds, streams and stands of hickory, tulip, rosewood, dogwood and evergreens.

New York's Met and Los Angeles' Getty typically top the list of the United States' most well-known museums. Marking two opposite ends of the map, the geography in between those museums is sometimes disregarded for its perceived dearth of culture. "Who'd want to live down there in the middle of nowhere?" asks a first-class passenger in Jason Aldean's song "Fly Over States." But, of course, that's a misguided sentiment; the Midwest is home to plenty of culturally astute people, and at least one of them punches well above her weight.

Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, started seriously thinking about opening an art museum in the 1990s. Her passionate pursuit culminated in the November 2011 opening of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., the very city in which her father opened the original Walton's Five and Dime store and where Walmart, the world's largest retailer, has its international headquarters. Walton is one of the wealthiest women in the world and, according to Time Magazine, one of the most influential. Her Walton Family Foundation donated an eye-popping $1.2 billion to build the museum and fill it with works created

Crystal Bridges' founder, Alice Walton, strove to build the museum using as many regionally made building products as possible, including laminated ceiling beams and wood flooring.

by some of this country's best-known artists, including Norman Rockwell, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol and others. The money was included in one of the foundation's "home region initiatives," donations specifically intended for the betterment of northwest Arkansas. With that in mind, project coordinators strove to create an American museum using American materials-including Arkansas-created wood flooring-and local labor.

Crystal Bridges resides in one of the countless ravines that have been cut into the Ozark plateau; it is situated within a sliver of the Ozarks that is only about one mile from downtown Bentonville and the original Five and Dime store (which now serves as the Walmart Visitor Center). The museum's name is two-fold: Part of it comes from the nearby Crystal Springs, and the other part refers to its two bridge-like features spanning the creek at the ravine's bottom. Conceived by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the museum is an ensemble of a half dozen connected pavilions with angled, curving walls, as well as swelling and sloping roofs that evoke the nearby terrain. Topping that unpredictable topography are stands of hickory, tulip, rosewood, dogwood and evergreens.

The museum operators chose the clear red oak for its neutral color, which they say complements the art on display.

The museum's interior is characterized by wood, glass, copper, steel, concrete, limestone and fieldstone. Ceilings stand supported by prominent laminated wood beams. Day-lit pathways guide patrons to the various galleries, in which the art is displayed in chronological order from the colonial times to the present. On their journeys, patrons come across several outlook points where they can view the ponds or surrounding terrain. The museum's openness makes visitors feel like they're strolling a pond-dotted forest full of art, and reinforcing that idea is just over 52,000 square feet of clear red oak wood floors throughout certain meeting spaces and all its gallery spaces.

Design Details

The ¾-by-2¼-inch clear red oak flooring in Crystal Bridges' was manufactured by Monticello, Ark.-based Maxwell Hardwood Flooring. It isn't every day that a wood flooring maker gets an order for this much clear-grade flooring, so the company worked for over about four months to create enough clear flooring to fulfill the huge order. "We furnished it a little bit at a time because it's hard to come up with the amount of volume of clear in a short period of time," says Tommy Maxwell, the company's owner. "So we just shipped him about 15,000 square feet whenever he needed it."

The museum includes famous works of American art like Andy Warhol's 'Dolly Parton' and Norman Rockwell's 'Rosie the Riveter' (pictured).

Springdale, Ark.-based Miller Commercial Flooring Inc. was tapped by the project's GCs, Rogers, Ark.-based Nabholz Construction Services and Houston-based Linbeck Group LLC, to install the flooring. The project was the latest in a 20-year relationship shared by Nabholz and Duane Miller, the flooring company's owner.

Realizing that patrons would be spending a lot of time on the gallery floor during their visit to Crystal Bridges, Safdie Architects designed a wood floor that would maximize comfort. Essentially, Miller's crews installed a sort of sport court in the gallery spaces. After laying a 20-mil plastic vapor barrier over the concrete slab, Miller installed a subfloor structure comprising 3/8-inch rubber pads fastened to a network of 2-inch-thick sleepers on 12-inch centers. One layer of plywood was fastened to the sleepers and then another layer of plywood nailed on top. Then came a layer of felt and, last, the clear red oak was nailed to the plywood. "It's basically a gymnasium-, engineered-type floor," Miller says. "It's very firm, but it's still softer to walk on than a typical hardwood floor."

For sanding and finishing duties, Miller contracted with Gym Masters Basketball Courts, which is based in Searcy, Ark., and specializes in large commercial wood flooring jobs. To prepare the clear red oak for finishing, T.W. Sparks, director of field operations for Gym Masters, opted to use standard walk-behind sanders instead of the riding sanders used on most large commercial jobs. "There is not a lot of wide open area even though it's a wide open area," Sparks says, explaining that "there aren't any square walls, the field is cut up, and it isn't really wide open enough to justify the riders. Even though a big room shares the same ceiling, there are walls cutting through it for the art, and there were 'art bays' to hold some sculptures. There were just too many obstructions." Sparks started with a rough cut and then the floor underwent two more sanding cuts. After all the sanding and buffing was completed, a sealer was applied and then followed with three coats of commercial-grade, water-based clear satin finish.

Even though the scale of this project was daunting, those involved say it went smoothly. There were no major hang-ups and the only obstacles were typical scheduling conflicts, which were easily resolved. "It was like a construction job on steroids," Sparks says. "There were a lot of construction managers there, and you had to work around a lot more trades than you normally would since it was such an enormous project."

Made in the U.S.A.

From the outset, Crystal Bridges was expected to have a sizable economic impact for the area surrounding Bentonville. The museum created about 120 full-time jobs for Bentonville upon opening, and it has an annual operating budget of $16-20 million. The Southern yellow pine roof decking and laminated ceiling beams were sourced in Arkansas. Of course, the wood flooring was manufactured in Arkansas, and nearly all of its raw timber was sourced in Arkansas, as well; Maxwell says that his suppliers get about 65 percent of their raw material from within Arkansas, while the remainder is logged in Mississippi and Missouri. "The founder of the museum, Alice Walton, wanted to use as many materials as possible out of the South and out of Arkansas," Maxwell says.

That Maxwell sources all its products domestically is a point of pride for his company. "We think it's very important. We never did fall into the trap of thinking we needed a lot of imported wood offerings," Maxwell says. "No question, there is a market for that, but ... we feel that right now the tendency is to look for products manufactured in the U.S. We buy a lot of lumber, and we keep a lot of sawmills busy in the U.S. Our business is very good, and we think that value system is part of the reason why."

Tying it Together

Safdie Architects was successful in its goal to deliver a museum where, nestled in the rolling hills of the Ozarks, American art and nature would commingle. Most importantly, the wooded components do not distract from viewing the art, the cardinal sin of any art display. "The neutral palette of hardwood floors works well with both historic and contemporary works, complementing the art rather than distracting," says Manuela Well-Off-Man, Crystal Bridges' assistant curator. "In our setting, where we emphasize the beauty of our landscape, hardwood floors are a natural choice. They're also a comfortable surface for guests to walk and stand on as they're viewing art, and they add a sense of warmth to our galleries."

This past summer Duane Miller's mother-in-law and his wife, Sheila, who handles the flooring company's books, attended the museum for the first time. Playing the secret shopper-she had never visited the job site during construction-she struck up a conversation with one of the gallery attendees about the museum's design. Inevitably, the conversation turned to the flooring. "The lady said to them, 'We love our floor; we consider it our fifth wall because it does such a good job showing off the art,'" Miller says.

Visitors apparently love the museum, as well. Crystal Bridges attracted about 575,000 of them in its first full year of operation, far eclipsing early goals of roughly 300,000 visitors. There is plenty to do there on a full day's visit: Besides its collection of stellar art, Crystal Bridges offers visitors special exhibitions, education for adults and children, a research library and nature trails spanning its 120-acre grounds. In some ways, the progress of Crystal Bridges is analogous to the U.S. itself: Both this country and the museum are relatively young compared with their peers, yet each has prospered under the guidance of passionate individuals. And what better way to contemplate those visions than through viewing this nation's art?