Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art: By the Numbers

The Bachman Wilson House, at its former location in Somerset County, N.J.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in Bentonville on Nov. 11, 2011. Here are some of the facts and figures associated with the attraction and its effect on northwest Arkansas.

Visitor Numbers

• Nov. 11, 2011-2012: 650,000
• 2013: 567,357
• 2014: 533,023
• 2015: 607,948
  Total to date: 2.7 million

2015 Attendance Breakdown

• Arkansas: 55%
• Adjacent states: 25% (highest Missouri, then Oklahoma and Texas)
• National/international: 20%

Art

• Temporary exhibitions: 13 (not including smaller, focused exhibitions like Shaking Hands & Kissing Babies, currently on view)
• Best-attended exhibition: State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now (175,000 visitors)
• Permanent collection: has grown by almost 50% since opening, increasing from just over 1,500 objects to more than 2,300

Education

• 140,000 students have visited the museum on field trips. They have come from 171 school districts and nine states: Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Students from San Antonio traveled the farthest.
• The founding of the Tyson Scholars in American Arts programs in 2011 has provided support for in-depth research of American art and artists by 15 scholars from across the country.
• The Don Tyson Prize was awarded this fall to the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, the world’s largest archive of papers and other ephemera related to American art.

Architecture

• About 80,000 people have toured the Bachman-Wilson House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright since it opened to the public on Nov. 11, 2015. The house was relocated from New Jersey to the museum’s grounds in 2014.

Nature

• The trails attract about 250,000 visitors every year.