Every summer since 2010, when the program started, the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia has participated in Blue Star Museums(opens in new tab). This program organized by the National Endowment for the Arts offers free admission and special discounts to military personnel and their families from Armed Forces Day (May 20 this year) through Labor Day (September 4).
Blue Star Museums is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and Blue Star Families, in collaboration with the Department of Defense and participating museums across the United States.
“We thank the 2023 Blue Star Museums who invite military personnel and their families to experience the many wonders they have to offer, whether it’s a glimpse into the past, an encounter with awe-inspiring art or a moment of discovery,” said Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. “The Georgia Museum of Art is helping to enrich the lives of military families and build meaningful connections between our nation’s military and their local community.”
Although admission to the museum is always free, the Museum Shop offers a 10 percent discount for military personnel and their families, who may often include UGA students. UGA has been recognized as the #1 military-friendly school in the country(opens in new tab) numerous times.
In 2020, when it was closed to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum created an online exhibition, “Recognizing Artist Soldiers in the Permanent Collection.”(opens in new tab) That exhibition is updated with new artists every year as we learn more about the artists in our collection and includes artists who served in conflicts from the Revolutionary War through the Korean War.
Organized chronologically by conflict (and then alphabetically within each section), it includes an image of a work in our collection by each artist and details about the artist’s military service, from Paul Revere’s use of engineering skills to measure cannonballs to James McNeill Whistler’s expulsion from West Point for long hair and a bad attitude to war artists like John Singer Sargent and William Aylward. For example, the painter Jacob Lawrence was drafted into the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II. At first, he served in a segregated regiment, but in 1944 he joined the first racially integrated crew on the cutter Sea Cloud. He worked as an artist to document military life as he traveled to Europe with the crew. The exhibition highlights these stories and others, enriching our picture of both military and artistic life. It also contains a link to a contact form through which visitors can submit ideas for other artists to include.
This year, the exhibition “Southern/Modern,”(opens in new tab) on view in person June 17 – December 10, 2023, also includes several artists who served in the military or made work about it. Robert Neal’s painting “Rearguard,” for example, pays homage to African American soldiers who fought in the Korean War. Its subject may be Private First Class William Thompson, who died in combat on August 6, 1950, after he stood his ground during a North Korean attack on his platoon.
The Museum Shop discount is available to anyone with a military ID, which includes Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, as well as members of the National Guard and Reserve, U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and NOAA Commissioned Corps and their family members.
The nationwide list of participating museums is available at https://www.arts.gov/initiatives/blue-star-museums(opens in new tab).
Authored by:
Hillary Brown
