Christopher B. Crosman

Chris studied art history at Oberlin after graduation and today is chief curator at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, established by Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam and an heir to his fortune. (The museum is scheduled to open in 2010. Among the works  it already owns is another portrait of Washington by Charles Willson Peale.)

Before moving to Arkansas in 2006, Chris was director of the William A. Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, and of the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, N.Y. In 2005 he wrote a well-received essay about the artist Andrew Wyeth’s wife, “Betsy’s World,” for Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic, published to accompany a major exhibition mounted jointly by the High Museum in Atlanta and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was chairman of the Maine Arts Commission and received the Governor’s Award for Leadership in Tourism.

He and his wife, Janet, a dietician, now live in Bella Vista, about 15 miles north of Bentonville. They have a daughter, Anne, who stayed in Maine and works in graphic design at Bank of America in Belfast. Chris and Janet keep a second home in Thomaston, Maine. His hobbies are grandchildren and tennis doubles.