So much controversy has surrounded the creation of the Crystal Bridges Museum that it almost inevitably colors the perception of its remarkable new building in Bentonville, Arkansas. One of the causes, of course, is the origin of most of the museum’s enormous endowment: the Walmart fortune. Even a cursory Google search quickly reveals the fault lines of the debate: detractors point out the hypocrisy of financing a philanthropic high-culture celebration of American art from the profits of a corporation known for its poor labor practices, cheap disposable goods, and outsourcing of production to China. Apologists argue that the real reason behind such complaints is the snobbery of the coastal elites, who detest the fact that some of America’s most prized art is now located in the rural heartlands; how, they ask, is Crystal Bridges worse than any of the long-established East Coast institutions created by the robber barons of the Gilded Age? Should it not be judged on its own merit of making art available at no cost to a population that previously had no access to it? Regardless of the side one might take, this debate is about much more than just a museum: it is ultimately about the fractured American identities struggling to find reconciliation at a time of hardship. Fractures were clearly present in Bentonville’s main square at the museum’s opening, which was scheduled on Veterans Day to give the ceremony a patriotic tinge, conflating the celebration of the troops with that of the real star of the day, the museum’s patroness, Alice Walton. On the margins of the gathering, however, despite its obvious discomfort, a small group of protesters from the local Occupy movement reminded the guests of the festivity’s other, less triumphant, side.

If the key question, under such circumstances, is what counts as American according to the Crystal Bridges’s collection and what perspectives it opens onto the evolving American identities, then similar questions could be posed about Moshe Safdie’s 200,000-square-foot building: how does it envision an American museum, and a museum of American art at that? And since it is not necessarily just a container of art, but possibly a work of art in itself, how does it envision American architecture in the twenty-first century, both in its relation to broader culture and to the natural environment?

Although not exactly understated, the Crystal Bridges Museum is the subtlest of the recent works by Safdie, who only in 2011 oversaw the completion of four major projects around the world, from nearby Kansas City to Punjab, India. Located at the bottom of a thickly wooded ravine at the outskirts of Bentonville, the museum is virtually invisible from the outside; visitors access it by shuttles that travel through a winding forest road leading to an unassuming colonnaded entrance. It is only from there that one gets a glimpse of the complex below: a sprawling conglomerate of interconnected pavilions surrounding two artificial ponds created by damming a stream fed from the nearby Crystal Spring—hence the museum’s name. In order to reach the main lobby, one needs to take the elevator down. Permanent collections branch off to the right, looping around and over one of the ponds, and connect back to the lobby through a café that bridges the water. To the left, an extended corridor winds along the second pond and leads to temporary exhibitions and further to the lecture hall that juts into the water. The route continues outside, onto a system of hiking trails with artworks exhibited alongside. The most prominent of these works is James Turrell’s latest “skyspace,” equipped with a light show that at dusk interacts with the changing color of the sky.

In collaboration with the international consultancy Buro Happold, Safdie performed several acts of engineering bravado that provide the museum’s most eye-catching features: three waterlocked pavilions, containing the lecture hall, the café, and one of the permanent collections spaces. From the outside, their vaulted roofs resemble armadillo shells; inside, however, the massive arches in laminated wood seem to float in mid-air, suspended on four-inch thick steel cables, offering almost totally unobstructed views of the surrounding ponds. The gravity-defying effect is breathtaking, especially in the café, where the slits between the arches bring additional daylight into the open space; at night, the pavilion glows like a Chinese lantern. In comparison, the similar pavilion down the stream seems somewhat self-defeating: in order to fulfill its program as exhibition space, it is occupied by two rather mundane boxes that disrupt the effect of the elaborate roof. One wonders if this arrangement was part of the original plan, since the gesture feels more like the retrofitting of an existing building rather than a deliberate variation on the perennial “house-within-a-house” theme.

Contradictions continue in the remaining three pavilions used for permanent exhibitions, which are all built on curvilinear plans and are covered with drooping tent-like roofs. The curved walls are actually less problematic than one might expect; their large radii assure that the paintings remain flush and the gentle long curves allow for extended sequences of portraits and landscapes to be shown uninterrupted, yet still to be grasped in one glance. More problematic are the free-standing walls needed for additional hanging space, which are not well integrated with the pavilions’ complex geometries. Not only do they generate a somewhat unbalanced space and occasionally confusing pathways, but they also contradict the spatial and tectonic nature of the building, especially where they clash with the lower ends of tent-like roofs. Even the detailing is less carefully articulated here than in the three centerpiece pavilions, as the massive roof beams often run abruptly into the walls without any transition.

Crystal Bridges is not exactly some kind of a postmodernist pastiche of architectural citations, yet it evokes many references. The theme of the building suspended over a stream and tucked into a luscious forest inevitably brings to mind Frank Lloyd Wright and his principles of “organic architecture.” Critics have already remarked that the suspension roofs recall Eero Saarinen’s turtle-like Ingalls Rink at Yale, whose biomorphic forms embody a rather different definition of organicism from Wright’s. Then there is Louis Kahn, whose work is suggested by the striated walls in polished concrete and by the formal primary geometries that govern parts of the building. Finally, Safdie himself acknowledges that the concept of interconnected pavilions was inspired in part by Richard Meier’s Getty Center in Los Angeles, except that Meier’s “hill town” here resides in a valley.¹ Whether consciously intended or not, such abundant references to certain specifically American strains of modernism gain special meaning in a museum devoted to American art. They all also carry the baggage of the social agendas and ethical positions of their originators, which thus vicariously color the perception of the museum and do not quite mesh smoothly. Wright’s romanticizing vision of American democracy—an apotheosis of individualism—had little to do with Kahn’s socially progressive attempts to articulate human communion, which in turn differed from Saarinen’s work on giving shape to paternalistic mid-century corporations, informed by techno-scientific development.

Despite strong visual cues to the remaining three precedents, the Wrightean theme of individualistic living in nature—with all its anti-urban connotations—is not only the most obvious in Safdie’s design, but is also of great pertinence today. Some parts of the museum appear to directly follow Wright’s advice that “a building should grow out of its surroundings”: the largest exhibition pavilion, for example, is carved into the hill and its roof appears almost flush with the natural slope. Similarly heeding the landscape is the decision to keep the building’s profile far below the tree-tops. Copper roofs and the pine planks embedded into concrete walls will gradually change color to blend with the forest. Yet, for all the attention paid to ensure that the construction would not disturb the ground beyond the perimeter of the building—an admirable feat, considering that the site is only accessible by a narrow road—the museum is still a sprawling complex and a surprisingly introverted one, predominantly focused on its own “artificial nature” of the two ponds. Despite Safdie’s professed aim to design “a museum in which art and nature are experienced simultaneously and harmoniously,” not much nature is visible from any of the exhibition rooms; except for the bridge-pavilion, they even lack natural lighting.² From the transitional spaces between the pavilions one mostly sees the ponds and other parts of the building; distant trees lurk only in the background. In order to really experience art and nature simultaneously, one needs to go out to the trails, but only a handful of pieces can be found there.

Such contradictions are about more than just the appearance that may or may not be in harmony with the surroundings. They are about the concerns for the environment that, over the past century, have evolved far beyond Wright’s ideas couched in nineteenth-century transcendentalism, celebrating rugged American individualism in direct touch with nature. By not using the available natural light, the building’s carbon footprint is increased, even if by only a small margin. As far as the real footprint is concerned, the extensive manipulation of the landscape included not just the plan that is all but compact, but also diverting and damming natural streams and lining the bed of the ponds with plastic to make sure the water indeed remains “crystal.” Not that these decisions will result in any imminent ecological catastrophe; but as symbolic gestures, they are still rooted in the paradigm of capitalist civilization’s infinite expansion and the idea that harmony with nature can be achieved only by conquering it.

As a piece of architecture, the new Crystal Bridges Museum is no doubt a landmark achievement for Arkansas. But that its beauty is so closely tied to its inherent contradictions is perhaps an apt metaphor for the controversy that has haunted its creation, as well as the contested definition of American patriotism in the twenty-first century.