Many students and faculty have visited Crystal Bridges, Bentonville’s large museum that sits on one hundred and twenty acres of the Walton family land. Aside from beautiful art, Crystal Bridges is also known for being a non profit organization.

On Monday, April 1 the Stock Market Club took a field trip to Crystal Bridges to find out just how they can operate without charging admission fees.

“We met with the chief financial officer for Crystal Bridges Museum, Tracy Cude,” said Mrs. Dotte Hill.

Tracy Cude explained to the group of students where the funding comes from to purchase the art, how much it costs to operate the museum for a year, and how they get their money.

The funding for Crystal Bridges comes from what they call “Purposeful Endowments.”

“I learned that Crystal Bridges is run almost completely off of endowments given by different companies. It costs roughly 20 million dollars a year to run and these costs are separate from the art costs. Crystal Bridges was created by the Walton family on their land. As CSFO she has a lot of fun working with the creative staff at Crystal Bridges. The main thing she told us was that Crystal Bridges is market dependent. If the market crashes Crystal Bridges might not be able to fund its building,” said junior Keifer Laverty.

A purposeful endowment is a chunk of money donated to a non profit organization to be used for a specific purpose

Purposeful endowments are restricted to spending only the earnings.

“It’s a pot of money that they use to earn money with,” said Mrs. Hill.

Crystal Bridges did not know up until three months before opening that they would get the endowment that allows them not to charge admission fees.

Cude also discussed job opportunities.  Crystal Bridges employs around 200 people and has around 800 volunteers. Because they employ people it contributes to the local economy.

The students also toured the museum and walked on the art trails.

“I enjoyed seeing the more contemporary Renaissance art, 1700’s-1800’s as the modern impressionist style just doesn’t seem to embody as much extravagance as, say, a painting akin to the Mona Lisa,” said Daulten Shafer.

“What surprised me was the fact that they have to use the money they get from their art has to be used to get more art from the museum. It does make sense, I just didn’t expect it to have to be like that,” said senior John Wallace.