Books and Arts; American art museums; A hinterland beauty;
文艺；书评；美国艺术博物馆; 腹地美景;
Moshe Safdie and some intelligent curatorial work have produced a rural gem;
摩西·萨夫迪和一些聪明的策展工作创造了一个田园珍品;

The Ozarks are America's least appreciated mountain range. Lacking the majesty of the Rockies, the breadth of the Appalachians or the mournful grandeur of the Cascades, there they sit, somewhere in the middle of the country, south of the Midwest, north of the south, east of the mountainous west. They have long drawn fishermen and hikers; until now, however, art fanciers have had little reason to visit.

欧扎克斯是美国受到赞赏最少的山脉，缺乏落基山脉的威严、阿巴拉契亚山脉的广袤以及喀斯咯特山脉的悲壮，它们坐落在那里，坐落在美国中部的某个地方，在中西部以南、南部以北、西部山区以东。长期以来，它们吸引着渔民和远足者，然而现在，艺术爱好者也有足够的理由光顾了。

That changes with the opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on November 11th. With 120 acres (48.6 hectares) of forests and gardens and long hiking trails connecting it with downtown Bentonville, Crystal Bridges is not just in but also of the Ozarks. Its patron, Alice Walton, is the scion of the Ozarks' first family: her father, Sam Walton, opened a discount store called Wal-Mart in nearby Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. Today Walmart (which officially went hyphenless in 2008) is America's largest private employer. The Walton Family Foundation gave the museum a $1.2 billion endowment and Ms Walton and the museum have been on something of a buying spree for several years.

这种改变是随着水晶桥美国艺术博物馆11月11日的开幕而来的。水晶桥拥有占地120亩（48.6公顷）的森林和花园，以及连接本顿维尔市中心的远足小径，它不仅位于欧扎克斯，也属于欧扎克斯。水晶桥的赞助人爱丽丝·沃尔顿是欧扎克斯第一家族的后裔，她的父亲山姆·沃尔顿1962年在阿肯色州罗杰斯附近开了一家折扣店沃－尔玛。如今沃尔玛（2008年正式去除了其中的连字符）已是美国最大的私人雇主。沃尔顿家族基金会给博物馆提供了12亿美元的捐助，几年来沃尔顿女士和博物馆抢购得有点疯狂。

The museum is not simply Ms Walton's own private collection. Like Nancy Aldrich Rockefeller she has been the driving force behind its creation. Ms Walton has long spoken of wanting to bring art to a region that has little of it, and in that ambition she has without question succeeded. Though admission is free thanks to a $20m bequest, the museum sells membership; roughly 4,600 of the 5,000 memberships have been bought by Arkansans.

博物馆不单是沃尔顿女士自己的私人收藏。象南希·爱德里奇·洛克菲勒一样，她一直是创建博物馆的背后推力。沃尔顿女士一直希望把艺术带到这个几乎没有艺术的地区，毫无疑问她成功地达成了这个雄心。虽然有2000万美元的遗赠而不收入场券，但博物馆出售会员资格，5000名会员中大约有4600名已被阿肯色人买去了。

Crystal Bridges takes its name from Crystal Spring, which flows on the grounds, and from the multiple bridges around which the museum is designed. The architect is Moshe Safdie, best known for his half-brutalist, half-playful Habitat 67 complex in Montreal. Crystal Bridges comprises several discrete but linked structures that meander around and above two spring-fed reflecting ponds, a design that Mr Safdie says is meant to echo the surrounding topography. Much of the museum's roofing is copper, which currently has the umbral hue of the foliage around it—the leaves dying in autumn, the copper brand new—but which will of course gradually darken, turning a deep rust red and then dark brown before taking on the familiar light green patina in years to come.

水晶桥得名自水晶泉和多处桥梁，水晶泉在地面上流淌，而博物馆是围绕着桥梁设计的。建筑师是摩西·萨夫迪，以其作品蒙特利尔的半野兽派、半俏皮的人居67生态公寓而闻名。水晶桥由几个分立但有连接的建筑物组成，这些建筑物迂回曲折地悬绕在泉水供给的两个倒影池上方和周围，据萨夫迪说这样设计是为了呼应周围的地形结构。博物馆的屋顶大部分是紫铜色，通常映有博物馆周围植物的荫影，秋天树叶掉光了，紫铜色烙上新彩。当然了紫铜色会逐渐变暗，转为深铁锈红，然后再转为深棕色，几年后会染上大家熟悉的浅绿的铜锈色。

And just as the buildings nestle into and hug their surroundings, with few right angles, so the roofs arch and swoop and fall, mimicking the region's mountains. Trees surround the museum; as they grow they will enshroud it with leaves in full summer and expose it in winter. Crystal Bridges does not look like a traditional Japanese structure, but something of the Japanese aesthetic—simplicity and cleanness of design, reverence for nature, the impulse to build in harmony with rather than atop the natural world—pervades it.

正因为建筑物嵌进了周围的环境，与周围的环境浑然一体，所以屋顶呈弧形猛扑而下，模拟这个地区的山脉。树木环绕着博物馆，随着树木的生长，整个夏天它们会用树叶遮蔽住博物馆，而在冬季则露出博物馆。水晶桥看起来不像日本的传统建筑物，但日本美学的某些东西，如设计上的简朴和清洁、对自然的敬畏、建筑与自然和谐而不是凌驾在自然之上的驱策等等，在博物馆的建筑上随处可见。

The museum's collection manages to be both thorough and surprising. Those who wish to see works by major American artists such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Hart Benton and Robert Rauschenberg will not be disappointed. But Don Bacigalupi, the museum director, says that in building a collection at this late date he looked at “identifying new scholarship and new research that led us toward artists and moments less well discovered”. That has inspired a particularly strong focus on women in American art—as patrons, subjects and creators. Janet Sobel, who made drip paintings several years before Jackson Pollock, gets her due. Among the museum's first-rate collection of portraits, nothing exceeds Dennis Miller Bunker's sombre, haunting image of Anne Page (pictured above); and in its contemporary galleries Alison Elizabeth Taylor's marquetry “Room” is, like the museum itself, a chamber of wonders in an unexpected place.

博物馆的收藏尽量做到既彻底又令人惊讶。那些希望看到温斯洛·荷马、托马斯·哈特·本顿以及罗伯特·劳森伯格等主要美国艺术家作品的人不会失望。但博物馆馆长唐·巴奇加卢皮表示，营造这么一个晚期的收藏，就他看来是“让我们确认早没发现的艺术家的新学术成就，以及确认早没发现的时刻的新研究”。特别是激发了对美国艺术中妇女的强烈关注，比如妇女赞助人、妇女题材和妇女创作者。珍妮特·索贝尔得到了应得的权益，她比杰克逊·波洛克早几年就创作出了滴画。在博物馆一流的画像收藏当中，当属丹尼斯·米勒·邦克令人难忘的忧郁画像安妮·蓓姬（见上图），而在博物馆的当代画廊中，艾莉森·伊丽莎白·泰勒镶嵌细工的“展室”就象博物馆本身，在意想不到的地方展示了一室的奇观。