Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened on November 11, 2011. Located in Bentonville, Arkansas, it was the first art museum of its size in the region. Since few students had ever been to a museum, this situation provided an opportunity to causally measure the impact of a one-time art museum field trip upon student outcomes through the implementation of a random control trial experiment. Conducted by researchers at the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform, the research found gains in cognitive and non-cognitive domains in students who received the treatment versus the control group. This article provides background about the programmatic conditions in which the evaluation was conducted, which may have played a significant role in the outcomes.