Crystal Bridges and the Momentary Reveal 2024 Exhibition Lineup

Shows to explore the relationship between art and science, the profound impact of Indigenous art, and photography as a tool for storytelling

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BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary today announced its list of 2024 exhibitions. For Crystal Bridges, the lineup includes Exquisite Creatures a dialogue with art, nature, and science by artist and naturalist Christopher Marley; Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art, an examination of a mid-century American art movement heavily influenced by Native American works; North Forest Outdoor Lights: Klip Collective, an immersive nighttime light and sound experience that will transform the museum’s North Forest; Knowing the West, a major traveling exhibition that features Native American and non-Native American artists to reflect the diverse peoples who contributed to art and life the West; and an as yet untitled installation in collaboration with the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese featuring the art and stories of their community.

The Momentary will launch three photography-centric exhibitions, including Kristine Potter: Dark Waters, a recent collection of seductive black and white photographs exploring the Southern Gothic genre; Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax, a reimagining of African American and African visual culture, both adapted from new books co-published with Aperture; and Best in Show: Pets in Contemporary Photography, an installation by Fotografiska Museum in New York City that explores the role furry and feathered friends play in our lives.

CRYSTAL BRIDGES

Exquisite Creatures | March 16, 2024 – July 29, 2024

Exquisite Creatures is a dialogue with art, nature, and science that asks the question: what is it about the natural world that calls to us? Throughout the exhibition, artist and naturalist Christopher Marley reflects on humanity’s intimate relationship with nature, revealing its intricate beauty and diversity through three-dimensional works comprised of animal, mineral, and plant specimens arranged in precise, geometric compositions. Shown together, the works create an immersive environment which inspires wonder and fosters a desire to preserve the natural world.

Crystal Bridges welcomes guests to experience the connection between art, nature, and science, emotionally and aesthetically, throughout the exhibition. The museum will activate the show’s themes through nature and science-based programming and activities both inside the museum and outdoors across its trails and grounds. The exhibition’s curatorial lead is Xuxa Rodriguez, PhD, associate curator, contemporary art.

Sponsored by Gelmart.

Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art | April 13, 2024 – September 30, 2024

Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art examines the mid-century American art movement known as the Indian Space Painters and the relationship between those non-Native painters, the Indigenous visual and material culture that inspired them, and the artists from the modern Native art movement who expanded upon such creative explorations through their own visual heritage. Investigating these relationships for the first time, Space Makers reconfigures the history of American art and reveals its foundations in Indigenous space – aesthetically, geographically, and socio-politically. The free, focus exhibition features loans from the Charles and Valerie Diker collection, one of the nation’s preeminent collections of the underrecognized Indian Space Painting movement, and is guest curated by Christopher T. Green, PhD, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College.

North Forest Outdoor Lights: Klip Collective | September 4, 2024 – January 5, 2025

Inspired by Crystal Bridges’ sprawling wilderness, the Philadelphia-based Klip Collective will present an immersive nighttime light and sound experience that simultaneously transforms the museum’s North Forest. Guests are invited to meander along the forest paths like never before with awe-inducing installations that cast the woods as a near-magical space of joyful discovery. Opening right at the end of summer and running into early winter, Klip’s exhibition leans into the passage of time and changing environment, unraveling as a mesmerizing journey through time and space.

Founded in 2003, Klip Collective is a collaborative group of artists, sound designers, composers, and technologists. Each member brings their unique skillset together to create sensorial experiments that charm, inspire, and transport viewers the world over. In speaking about this project at Crystal Bridges, Klip’s founder and creative director, Ricardo Rivera, said, “We’re honored to have the opportunity to transform Crystal Bridges’ North Forest space with new site-specific audio and visual installations. Our exhibit will showcase a layered, meditative experience. Through sonic and illuminated landscapes, our work will explore cycles in nature and experiment with distortions in time.” This exhibition is curated by Alejo Benedetti, curator of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges and the Momentary.

Knowing the West | September 14, 2024 – January 27, 2025

The first major traveling exhibition to focus on the coexistence of art created between 1785 and 1922 by Native American and non-Native American artists, Knowing the West celebrates the American West as inclusive, complex, and reflective of the diverse peoples who contributed to art and life there.

Americans often feel they “know the West,” whether informed by direct experience or popular culture. Knowing the West embraces these impressions and expands ideas of art of the West by presenting more than 100 artworks including textiles, baskets, paintings, pottery, sculpture, beadworks, saddles, and prints. This exhibition recontextualizes historic artwork, encourages deeper exploration of a familiar topic, and celebrates the rich cultures that reflect the complexity of the American West. In collaboration with Rizzoli International Publications Inc., Crystal Bridges will present a fully illustrated publication to accompany Knowing the West, featuring essays by curators, curatorial advisors, and scholars. The book, like the exhibition, will center Native voices and perspectives as it takes a deeper look at the project’s aim to complicate popular perceptions of the American West.

The exhibition is co-curated by Mindy N. Besaw, PhD, curator of American art at Crystal Bridges, and Jami C. Powell, PhD, Osage Nation, associate director of curatorial affairs and curator of Indigenous art at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

Knowing the West is supported by a planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Exhibition collaboration with the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese (Title TBD) | October 19, 2024 – March 31, 2025

Crystal Bridges and the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese (ACOM) are partnering to present a new exhibition that focuses on the Marshallese community by infusing a reverence for tradition with an eagerness to celebrate Marshallese Indigenous culture here and now. ACOM will develop and navigate the direction for the show, weaving in objects and stories shared from the community and works created by local artists and makers. Through this collaborative effort, the exhibition intends to explore and honor the Marshallese community and the intergenerational connection rooted in Northwest Arkansas.

The exhibition is co-curated by the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese and Alejo Benedetti, curator of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

THE MOMENTARY

Kristine Potter: Dark Waters | May 19, 2024 – October 13, 2024

In Dark Waters, a tour de force of Southern Gothic Noir, Kristine Potter reinvents a centuries-old genre with coolness and clarity. With this recent collection of seductive and darkly brooding photographs, Potter reflects on the Southern Gothic mythos found in the popular imagination of “murder ballads” – traditional songs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that often end in death and despair.
Her richly detailed black-and-white images channel the setting and characters of these songs, capturing the landscape of the American South and creating portraits that stand in for the oft-unnamed women at the center of their stories. In doing so, she both evokes and exorcizes the ambient sense of threat that women often grapple with as they move through the world. Dark Waters is accompanied by Potter’s second monograph, co-published by the Momentary and Aperture, which continues her engagement with the American landscape as a palimpsest for cultural ideologies.

Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax | May 19, 2024 – October 13, 2024

Encompassing photography, film, painting, sculpture, and installation, Awol Erizku’s work references and reimagines African American and African visual culture, from hip-hop vernacular to iconic symbols from across history, including the Pan-African flag and the image of Nefertiti. Erizku’s vision is expansive, drawing on traditions of spirituality, Surrealism, and Conceptualism to create uniquely powerful art.

Mystic Parallax is the first major monograph (co-published by the Momentary and Aperture) and exhibition by this rising interdisciplinary artist. It blends his studio practice with work made as an in-demand editorial photographer and features his conceptual portraits of leading Black cultural figures, such as Amanda Gorman, Michael B. Jordan, Pharrell Williams, and Solange. As Erizku has said, “It’s important for me to create confident, powerful, downright regal images of Black people.”

Best in Show: Pets in Contemporary Photography | November 23, 2024 – April 13, 2025

Through Best in Show, Momentary visitors will have the opportunity to explore the role that furry (and feathered) friends have played in culture and how they stand in as representations of status, power, loyalty, compassion and companionship through the perspectives of 25 global artists. Works on view will include examples by William Wegman, famed for his portraits of his Weimaraners; Walter Chandoha, the world’s first professional cat photographer; and Sophie Gamand, known for her touching, sensitive photographs of dogs taking baths.

Organized by Fotografiska New York, the contemporary museum of photography, art, and culture, Best in Show celebrates and acknowledges constant companions, their presence in Western art and popular culture, and their multifaceted relationships with humans.

Over the course of the year, a variety of programs associated with these exhibitions – from community days and art classes to high-profile lectures and more – will take place at Crystal Bridges and the Momentary. General admission to both spaces is always free. Visit CrystalBridges.org and theMomentary.org for exhibition and experience ticket details, membership information, hours, and to plan a visit.

About Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

The mission of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is to welcome all to celebrate the American spirit in a setting that unites the power of art with the beauty of nature. Since opening in 2011, the museum has welcomed more than 10.8 million visitors across its spaces, with no cost for admission. Crystal Bridges was founded in 2005 as a non-profit charitable organization by arts patron and philanthropist, Alice Walton. The collection spans five centuries of American masterworks from early American to current day and is enhanced by temporary exhibitions. The museum is nestled on 120 acres of Ozark landscape and was designed by world-renowned architect Moshe Safdie. A rare Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house was preserved and relocated to the museum grounds in 2015. Crystal Bridges offers public programs including lectures, performances, classes, and teacher development opportunities. Some 300,000 school children have participated in the Willard and Pat Walker School Visit program, which provides educational experiences for school groups at no cost to the schools. Additional museum amenities include a restaurant, gift store, library, and five miles of art and walking trails. In February 2020, the museum opened the Momentary in Downtown Bentonville (507 SE E Street), conceived as a platform for the art, food, and music of our time. In 2026, Crystal Bridges will complete a nearly 100,000 square foot expansion that will allow the museum to expand access for all. For more information, visit CrystalBridges.org. The museum is located at 600 Museum Way, Bentonville, Arkansas 72712.

About the Momentary

Opened in February of 2020 in Downtown Bentonville, the Momentary is a platform for the art, food, and music of our time. It is a catalyst for creativity and economic vitality, and a welcoming hub that gathers and celebrates local heroes and international stars. The Momentary was founded by the Walton family, based on the vision of Tom, Olivia, and Steuart Walton. The Walton Family Foundation is supporting this project as a way to enhance the quality of life in Northwest Arkansas. Its commitment to cultivating arts and cultural experiences provides more opportunities for education, engagement, and enjoyment in our region. The Momentary is an extension of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by Alice Walton. The Momentary welcomes all with free general admission. Additional offerings include live music, an artist-in-residence program, culinary experiences such as Onyx Coffee Lab and the sky-high Tower Bar, indoor and outdoor gathering spaces, an outdoor festival space, and a retail shop. For more information, visit theMomentary.org. The Momentary is located at 507 SE E Street, Bentonville, Arkansas 72712. The Momentary’s Founding Funders are Walton Family Foundation, Walmart, RØDE Microphones, The Coca-Cola Company, Tyson Family Foundation, and Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation.