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By Marc Leepson
“When you walk into the converted warehouse on Chicago’s
South Side, it’s like a slap in the face.” That
was art critic John David Morley commenting in August of
1995 on the visceral power of the artwork displayed in the
temporary home of the Vietnam Veterans Arts Group. That collection
of artists and their supporters had amassed what Morley called “the
most complete exhibition of Vietnam War art yet seen in America” and
was showing it off in a borrowed space.
A year later, the
group began a move into what was to be its permanent home,
a gift from the city of Chicago. Another converted warehouse,
this one is a massive, three-story, 30,000-square-foot former
cocoa manufacturing plant at 1801 South Indiana Street, at
the corner of 18th Street, in Chicago’s
Prairie Historic District, a few miles south of the Loop.
How
the one and only National Vietnam Veterans Arts Museum came
to be is an intriguing story. In 1994, after reading a feature
article on the Vietnam Veterans Art Group in the Chicago
Tribune, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and the city’s
influential Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg made
arrangements to see an extensive collection of the group’s
work. Those artists had gotten together in the Windy City
in 1980. The core members were Sondra Varco, an art collector
and self-described suburban housewife, and a handful of accomplished
artists who served in Vietnam: Joseph Fornelli, Ned Broderick,
Dale Samuelson, Rick Aztlan, and Mike Petersen.
The Vietnam
Veterans Art Group had first exhibited in Chicago in 1981.
Within days after that show opened, veterans from around
the nation contacted the group and offered their work for
its collection. That work formed the basis for a traveling
show called Reflexes and Reflections that drew critical and
popular raves when it was exhibited in large museums and
art galleries on college campuses.
From 1981 until 1994 the
group struggled, plagued mainly by financial and logistical
problems. Funds were short and space to store the group’s
art collection was difficult to find. Often the growing collection
was stored in garages and basements of friends of Varco and
the artists. Then, in 1994, an amazing thing happened. Mayor
Daley and Commissioner Weisberg were so taken by the collective
work of the Vietnam veteran artists that they made arrangements
to give the group the old factory building, along with a
million bucks to make it into a permanent museum.
“They asked us how much we needed to turn this place
into a first-rate art museum,” Broderick told me in
1999. “Sondra came up with the figure of one million
dollars and the city followed through. They wanted this museum
in Chicago.”
THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
The museum was dedicated on August 25, 1996, with a staff
of eight, funded by grants and helped by a legion of volunteers.
When I visited for the first time in 1999, I, too, experienced
the figurative face slap as I came face to face with some
of the most powerful images of the Vietnam War created by
men and women who saw the war up close and personal, lived
with those images, and then poured them forth in paintings,
sculpture, collages, and photographs.
“It’s real, real life,” said Jerry Kykisz,
the artist and Vietnam veteran who serves as the museum’s
general manager. “Maybe not the pretty pictures you
see at the contemporary art museums.”
My second visit to the museum early in March came on a bone-chilling,
only-in-Chicago-cold late afternoon. The temperature outside
was in the low twenties; the sky the color of purple slate;
the wind howling. The cavernous museum was cold—it’s
almost impossible to heat. But the images on display still
were blazing hot.
I kept my winter coat on as Kykisz, who
did a 1968-69 tour in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division
and who is one of two full-time, paid employees, showed me
around the amazing collection. The museum houses nearly 2,000
works of art, including paintings, photography, sculpture,
poetry, and music—the work of some 125 artists.
Kykisz does just
about every job you can imagine at the museum, from hanging
exhibits to changing light bulbs. That day he was packing
up an exhibit and stopped to talk to a class of high school
students. In between, Kykisz filled me in on what only can
be described as a pivotal moment in the museum’s short
history.
Attendance, especially after
September 11, 2001, has been down significantly. Contributions
also are down. Grants are increasingly hard to come by. Utility
bills are sky high. The museum now faces a considerable debt
and cannot hire new staff, make much-need repairs to the
building, or enhance or expand its exhibits and programs.
“The situation is very dire,” Jim Holtzman, the
museum’s treasurer, told The Washington Post last fall. “At
this point, we’re trying to help stem the bleeding.”
In
an effort to help, the city of Chicago, working closely with
the museum’s board, has come up with a plan that
would keep the building open at 18th and Indiana for now.
The plan calls for transferring the building to the Chicago
Park District, thereby wiping out the museum’s debt,
eliminating any other open obligations, and providing subsistence-level
funds to allow the museum an opportunity to rebuild and redevelop
itself for its next phase.
“As part of this process, the museum has agreed to
move to a more suitable and—more importantly—a
more accessible location within the next three years,” Holtzman
said. The museum also will be changing its name to reflect
the fact that since 2003 it has broadened its mission to
include art from veterans of the nation’s more recent
wars.
“Our mission is still the same,” Kykisz said. “We’re
still exhibiting artwork by soldiers on the subject of war.
We’re just broadening our horizons to include the current
crop of veterans. They need a place, too. We needed a place,
and they do, too.”
The National Vietnam Veterans Art
Museum will likely soon be known by a new name “that
reflects both its Vietnam-era roots and its mission to support
all war veterans,” Holtzman,
said. “And, over the next couple of years it will reposition
itself and raise the funds necessary to move to a new location
as yet to be determined.”
If you’d like to help in this important endeavor, mail
a check to The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, Attention:
Fight for Art, 1801 S. Indiana St., Chicago, IL 60616; or
use your credit or debit card by calling 312-326-0270 or
going to the Museum’s web site http://www.nvvam.org
ARTS
IN BRIEF ON THE WEB
The “Arts in Brief” section of this column begins
a new, virtual life with this issue. You will now find a
link to that section on VVA’s website at: www.vva.org Since we have the luxury of nearly unlimited space on the
web, we have expanded these items, and also will be keeping
them up to date on a daily basis. Take a look and let us
know what you think.
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2008, Vietnam Veterans of America. All Rights Reserved. 8605 Cameron
Street, Silver Spring, MD 20910 
