Right next to the Glessner House in the Prairie District at 1801 South Indiana Avenue is the The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum. Finding this museum is exactly the kind of serendipity that crave on my two and a half month journey.
The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum
I was initially reluctant to pay the $6 entrance fee to be subjected to art that was lame and uninteresting to me. What a surprise I was in for. How timely it was for me to be here, just as John Kerry has accepted the nomination for the Democratic Party and with our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was just hard for me to imagine that so many of these young men (at the time 19-22) died in the conflict before I was even born. It was really touching for me to read about men who died in the summer of 1970, as I was yet to be born. Here's a sampling of the art that I took pictures of that spoke to me:
The Scream
A letter written by a soldier in December 1968 to his father, with accompanying pictures. I wish each of you could have read it, with the amazing sense of strength, humor and fear in his letter.
The author Jacobs is on the right, age 21 in 1968
Anguish
Some 58,000 dogtags, each representing a fallen soldier of the Vietnam War. As one went through the museum, there was a constant clinking as the dogtags hit each other.
Here was the piece that got me the most, it is the inscription at the bottom that I thought was MOST compelling a statement about what was then and what is now:
"We the willing
Led by the unknowing
Do the necessary
For the ungrateful"
There was a tour group of what must have been Vietnam Veteran's who were touring the museum at the same time I was. I just watched them to see how they were moved, but most were pretty stoic. If this is the power of art, well, then I was completely emotionally charged by what I viewed. For all you who ever visit Chicago, this is a must see.
For me, it was incredibly timely considering what is going on in our world at the moment, especially with the debate on our role in the world.
I was initially reluctant to pay the $6 entrance fee to be subjected to art that was lame and uninteresting to me. What a surprise I was in for. How timely it was for me to be here, just as John Kerry has accepted the nomination for the Democratic Party and with our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was just hard for me to imagine that so many of these young men (at the time 19-22) died in the conflict before I was even born. It was really touching for me to read about men who died in the summer of 1970, as I was yet to be born. Here's a sampling of the art that I took pictures of that spoke to me:
Here was the piece that got me the most, it is the inscription at the bottom that I thought was MOST compelling a statement about what was then and what is now:
There was a tour group of what must have been Vietnam Veteran's who were touring the museum at the same time I was. I just watched them to see how they were moved, but most were pretty stoic. If this is the power of art, well, then I was completely emotionally charged by what I viewed. For all you who ever visit Chicago, this is a must see.
For me, it was incredibly timely considering what is going on in our world at the moment, especially with the debate on our role in the world.
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