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Building Crystal Bridges: Art, Architecture, and Nature

2016

Displayed in six cases in the Museum’s Great Hall Corridor, Building Crystal Bridges explore the surprising stories behind the conception, design, and construction of this unique museum. The exhibition takes visitors on a journey along the four-year construction timeline with aerial images and photos taken from cranes. It explores engineering challenges, such as coaxing Town Branch Creek through weirs to form the Museum ponds, developing the custom-shaped beams and intricate cable system that support some of the Museum’s distinctive roofs, and the painstaking process of forming architectural-quality concrete structures, then hand polishing each one to a gleaming finish. Building Crystal Bridges tells the story of a museum embedded in an engaged and growing community in the Arkansas Ozarks—a place to experience art, architecture, and lifelong learning in an inspiring natural setting.