EUREKA SPRINGS — Turning visits to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville into a vacation anchored in Eureka Springs is the goal of organizers for the Arkansas Art Trail.
“We recognized pretty clearly [that] the new customer coming into [the] area is going to want to explore Northwest Arkansas, but there wasn’t a conduit that served as a path to connect nationally significantareas,” said Jack Moyer, who developed the trail with his wife, Rachel Moyer, owner of Historica Consulting in Holiday Island.
The Arkansas Art Trail, which serves as a visitors guide to destinations in the region, is a privately funded project that is mainly Internet-based, Moyer said.
The trail highlights 10 sites where “nature and art intersect,” according to its website. The destinations, which arewest, north and east from Eureka Springs, include Crystal Bridges, the Buffalo National River and Pea Ridge National Military Park.
The trail is organized into three one-day trips, and visitors can experience the trail online, at arkansasarttrail. com, or in person.
Rachel Moyer plans to maintain a blog on the website and will announce events, such as the Walton Arts Center’s Artosphere festival,which celebrates art and nature.
Crystal Bridges is opening Nov. 11 and already more than 10,000 tickets have been reserved, museum officials have said. The museum boasts more than 500 artworks collected by Wal-Mart Stores heir Alice Walton.
Jack Moyer, who is also vice president and general manager of the Basin Park and Crescent hotels in Eureka Springs, said the trail is designed toappeal to the “touring vacationer,” and is modeled after the Hudson River School Art Trail in New York state.
The Hudson River School Art Trail follows the painting locales of artist Thomas Cole, founder of the 19th-century landscape movement and who is a subject of one of Crystal Bridges’ masterpieces- Asher B. Durand’s Kindred Spirits.
Rachel Moyer said beyond promoting tourism, the Arkansas Art Trail is intendedto showcase the “awe-inspiring” landscapes of Northwest Arkansas.
She said the trail was divided into segments to make it easier for people new to the area to experience it as a local would.
“We’re framing the pieces and putting them all together [to make it easier] for people who are not from the area [to] experience,” she said.
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Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 10/22/2011