The collection ranges over the nation’s artistic history, including Gilbert Stuart’s 1797 portrait of George Washington.ArtTracker| The family of Walmart founder Sam Walton has pledged $800 million to his daughter Alice Walton’s new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which will open in Bentonville, Arkansas November 11, 2011.

WSJ writes that the gift from the Walton Family Foundation is larger than J Paul Getty’s bequest to his namesake Los Angeles museum and that of Texas philanthropist Caroline Wiess Law to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

The 201,000 square-foot museum will chronicle the entire story of American art from the Colonial era of the late 1600s to contemporary pieces made by American artists a few months ago. The ambitious plan is associated with the robber-baron museum builders of the Gilded Age, not contemporary new museums.