Alice Walton

Alice moved to this 3200 acres of forest land in the late 1990’s after her business venture Llama Company failed to take off. She has been since living her reclusive life in the insides of a humble 4,432 square foot stucco house, built in the middle of the ranch. The ranch is particularly known for its race-winning horses, which are bred for cutting, meaning they are trained for a competition in which riders in a ring compete to separate cattle singly from a herd.

Location: The ranch is located in Milsap, Texas.

Alice, as a kid used to play with horses and her life has come full circle now as she spends all her time living in this ranch of hers, raising cutting horses and performing philanthropic duties

Apart from her panache for collecting art works, Alice has a life-long obsession for horses. The Wal-Mart heiress is an outstanding breeder and instructor of cutting horses. Alice has even competed in cutting horse competitions for many years, using her experience and zeal to win. Her family owned Rocking W Ranch in Mineral Wells, Texas deals in breeding and selling of cutting horses, and Alice contributes her best part for the development of the ranch. 

Alice Walton is a ranch girl, and likes to spend the most of her time at her Texas ranch. Given the size of her ranch, which is 3200 acres, she does needs a sturdy vehicle, which not only is apt for farm conditions but is also fashionably hip. 2006 Ford F-150 King has exteriors of a modern truck but the interiors are as plush as a sedan, making you rarely feel like you are sitting inside a pickup truck. However being essentially a farm vehicle it has enough power packed under the hood which helps the driver in good stead. 

The Wal-Mart successor Alice serves as the board member of her family’s environment based organization, the Walton Family Foundation. The charity is primarily focused on conservation of the natural resource water, and specifically invests in those programs and organizations that provide enduring conservation solutions for rivers and oceans. The foundation divides all its activities under two broad heads which includes fresh water and marine conservation. The foundation’s environment team is dedicated to work towards the conservation solutions that for local economies. Its basic aim is to promote the economic prosperity by upgrading and preserving the environmental quality. Apart from it, the charity also focuses on economic progress in the Mississippi Delta region and Northwest Arkansas, and the K-12 education reform.

Alice Wanton has long been a passionate collector and patron of American art. So it didn’t came as a surprise when she announced to the world about her plans to open an art museum in her native Bentonville. However, things got a little rough for Alice when she bought “Kindred Spirits” by Asher B. Durand from the New York Public Library for around $35 million to display in her museum. The art fraternity grew skeptic of Alice’s intentions and with every further purchase of an artwork made by her she was slammed as “a hovering culture vulture poised to swoop down and seize tasty masterpieces from the hands of weak.” Her museum was considered to be an unnecessary addition and a threat to the world of art.
However, she got it built within record period of time and opened the museum for the public in November 2011. The Walton family sponsers every entry and for the same has granted the museum a $20 million grant. The Wal-Mart has also pledged a $1.2 billion support to the museum in the coming time. Designed by the Boston based architect Moshe Safdie, the museum houses Walton’s personal collection as well as gifts and loans from other private collectors. The museum has amazing architecture and the bridge is actually two building that connect each other over a man-made lake.

The Wal-Mart heiress, Alice L. Walton has a flair for collecting valuable art pieces, which is evident from her exotic collection of works from some of the world famous artists including Edward Hopper, George Bellows, Winslow Homer, Charles Wilson Peale and Marsden Hartley. One of the gems in Alice’s art collection is the landscape “Kindred Spirits”, crafted to perfection by the coveted artist Asher B. Durand. The ninth richest person in America, Alice acquired the Durand crafted landscape via a sealed-bid auction from the coveted New York Public Library in 2005, for an estimated amount of more than $35 million.

Durand’s 1849 painting, "Kindred Spirits," depicts the poet William Cullen Bryant and the painter Thomas Cole standing on a rocky ridge in the Catskills mountains. The marvelous landscape painting portrays the geographical features in Kaaterskill Clove along with a small illustration of the Kaaterskill Falls. Bryant received the legendary painting as a gift from New York art collector Jonathan Sturges. Later in 1904, Bryant’s daughter Julia bestowed the painting to the New York Public Library.

This is not done as the Wal-Mart heiress has still a lot more art work to acquire in future. Her family’s 2011 founded Crystal Bridges Museum of Am­er­ican Art is located in Bentonville, Arkan­sas and features around 400 coveted works from her 1,000-strong collection compiled in five years. Designed by Massachusetts-based designer Moshe Safdie, the art museum sits proudly on 120 acres of family-owned land in Bentonville and features around 201,000 sq. ft of space.