Currently under construction in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art founded by Alice Walton is envisioned as a premier national art institution dedicated to American art and artists that will spur the continued economic development of Northwest Arkansas. On Tuesday, October 7, Robert G. Workman, executive director of Crystal Bridges, will discuss the art, architecture, and planning of this new museum project scheduled to be completed in 2010. His lecture, “Creating a Sense of Place: Art, Architecture, and Nature at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art,” part of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute’s Directors’ Perspective Series, will be held at 7 pm. Admission to the lecture is free.

Similar to the Clark’s campus enhancement and expansion program, Crystal Bridges embraces its rural surroundings creating a park-like campus in which visitors interact with art and the natural environment. Reed Hilderbrand, landscape architect for the Clark’s expansion, has been selected as landscape architect for Crystal Bridges. The main pavilions at Crystal Bridges are designed by architect Moshe Safdie, and will house a permanent collection of American art masterworks from the colonial era to the modern day. The heart of the permanent collection will include the Hudson River School masterwork Kindred Spirits by Asher B. Durand; Charles Willson Peale’s 18th-century painting of George Washington; Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington (The Constable-Hamilton Portrait); Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand by Thomas Eakins; Spring, by Winslow Homer; and Marsden Hartley’s Hall of the Mountain King. A dynamic temporary exhibitions program will complement the holdings of the permanent collection and exemplify the diversity of American artists.

Workman, a 30-year museum professional with a comprehensive background in all aspects of museum management, has been involved with the project since its inception. He began his association with Crystal Bridges in December 2003, working as a consultant to assist with early-stage planning, acquisitions, building design, and pre-construction processes. Prior to joining the Crystal Bridges project, Workman was deputy director of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, where he led the museum’s $39 million renovation project and expansion.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown. The galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm (daily in July and August). Admission June 1 through October 31 is $12.50 for adults, free for children 18 and younger, members, and students with valid ID. Admission is free November 1 through May 31. For more information, call 413-458-2303 or visit www.clarkart.edu.

The exhibition Drawn to Drama: Italian Works on Paper, 1500-1800 at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute explores how Italian artists of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries sought and found imaginative solutions to the problems involved in depicting miraculous, visionary, often obscure, and frequently highly dramatic narratives. Michael Cassin, Director of the Clark’s Center for Education in the Visual Arts, will present the opening lecture on Saturday, October 11, at 3 pm. Admission to the lecture is free.

Drawings can often allow people to see directly into the mind of an artist. They can be sketches made quickly to record an interesting face or the essence of an idea, they might be carefully planned “blueprints” for paintings that will eventually appear in other media, or they might be independent works of art in their own right. Cassin will look at how artists of the period learned to draw the human figure, and how the body was used as a vehicle for dramatic expression.

A magnificent group of rarely seen and unpublished sixteenth- through eighteenth-century Italian drawings will be highlighted in Drawn to Drama: Italian Works on Paper, 1500-1800. Selected from the Clark’s impressive collection of Old Master drawings and the private collection of Robert Loper, Drawn to Drama will offer a unique opportunity to view this special group of Italian drawings that are dramatic in subject, composition, and execution. The exhibition marks the first time Robert Loper’s collection will be seen by the public. Sixty-five drawings, including those by Giorgio Vasari, Guercino, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Salvator Rosa, Luca Giordano, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his son Domenico Tiepolo, are featured in the exhibition. Drawn to Drama is on view through January 4, 2009.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm (daily in July and August). Admission June 1 through October 31 is $12.50 for adults, free for children 18 and younger, members, and students with valid ID. Admission is free November through May. For more information, call 413-458-2303 or visit www.clarkart.edu.