If at First Alice Walton Doesn’t Succeed…

…she tries again…and wins. Two Thomas Jefferson University Eakins sales done, one more to go—“Portrait of William S. Forbes.”
And we still haven’t heard whether the Philadelphia Museum will sell another Eakins, to help pay for “The Gross Clinic.”
No messy price-matching grace period this time, and no sharing with the National Gallery (let alone a Philadelphia institution). It’s off to Wal-Mart’s headquarters city for “Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand.”
Meanwhile, Walton’s Crystal Bridges, where all this bounty is headed, will open a program and exhibit space in downtown Bentonville, Arkansas, on June 16. The Moshe Safdie-designed museum is scheduled to open in Bentonville in 2009.