Alice Walton

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Alice Walton

Born October 7, 1949 (1949-10-07) (age 58)
United States
Net worth US$19 billion

Alice Louise Walton (born October 7, 1949) is an American heiress to the Wal-mart fortune. She is the daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and Helen Walton, and sister of S. Robson Walton, John T. Walton, and Jim Walton. In 2007 her estimated net worth was US$16.1 billion, making her the second richest woman in the United States after sister-in-law Christy Walton, and the third richest woman in the world.

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[edit] Biography

Alice Walton graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, and lives in Mineral Wells, Texas on The Rocking W Ranch.

Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton's only daughter, Alice chose not to get involved in the operations of the family business. For a time she was a broker for E.F. Hutton. Her hobby is horses.

Walton was the twentieth largest individual contributor to 527 committees in the U.S. presidential election, 2004, donating US$2.6 million to the conservative Progress for America group.[1] During the 2004 election cycle, Progress for America ran advertisements supporting the Iraq occupation and praising George W. Bush for preventing "another 9/11". The ads were criticized for their inaccuracy.[2]

In 1989, Walton hit a fifty-year-old pedestrian woman in an automobile accident in Springdale, Arkansas. The woman later died from her injuries; no charges or citations were issued to Walton. In 1996, Walton was cited for driving while intoxicated and fined US$925.[3]

[edit] Art collection

In 2005, Alice Walton purchased Asher Brown Durand's celebrated painting, Kindred Spirits, in a sealed-bid auction for a purported US$35 million dollars. The 1849 painting, a tribute to Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole, had been given to the New York Public Library in 1904 by Julia Bryant, the daughter of Romantic poet and New York newspaper publisher William Cullen Bryant (who is depicted in the painting with Cole).[4] Walton has also purchased works by American painters Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, as well as a notable portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale,[5] in preparation for the 2009 opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.[6]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ OpenSecrets.org
  2. ^ Pro-Republican ads stretch the truth on Iraq to influence elections, McClatchy, October 17, 2006
  3. ^ Forbes Autos
  4. ^ National Gallery
  5. ^ Alice Walton's Fig Leaf
  6. ^ Crystal Bridges website

[edit] External links