Wal-Mart's Walton family pledges $800 million to museum




The family of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton has pledged to give $800 million to a new Arkansas art museum founded by Walton’s daughter Alice,

the

Wall Street Journal

reported.

The gift is “the largest cash donation ever made to a U.S. art museum,” the article said.

The Walton Family Foundation is making the gift, according to the report.

The gift reflects the outsized ambitions the retail-chain family has for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a complex of eight gallery pavilions it has helped build around a pair of ponds in the company’s northwestern Arkansas hometown of Bentonville (population 35,301).

The

Journal

report said the 201,000-square-foot museum will open to the public on Nov. 1.

The guiding force behind the museum — and the gift made [May 4] — is Ms. Walton, 61 years old, a well-known player in the art world who conceived the museum six years ago and has spent lavishly to build up its collection from scratch….

Don Bacigalupi, the museum’s executive director, said a majority of the 400 works to be displayed when the museum opens were purchased by Ms. Walton or her family’s foundation. He said $325 million from the family’s [$800 million] gift … was earmarked to buy additional artworks. Another $350 million will go to cover the museum’s operating expenses (around $16 million a year), and the rest, around $125 million, will be set aside for future upkeep of the complex.

(Source:

Wall Street Journal,

May 6, 2011.)

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