AKU-2018-005

Portrait Collective Ozark, Fayetteville

Sam Walton, Bentonville, Arkansas, 1962

1998

Oil on canvas, American Hyperrealist manner

120 × 95 cm

Acquisition

Purchased, 2018

Curator’s Note

Sam Walton opened the first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas, on July 2, 1962. He drove a 1979 Ford F-150 pickup truck until his death in 1992, by which point his family's net worth exceeded $25 billion. Walmart is currently the largest private employer in the United States, with 1.6 million workers. The company's health insurance was long structured so that most employees did not qualify. Between 2000 and 2008, taxpayers in several states subsidized Walmart employees' healthcare costs through Medicaid at an estimated rate of $900 million annually. This portrait depicts Walton outside the Rogers store in the year of its opening.

Exhibition

gilded-age-digital-age