09 May 2016 Free war history exhibit

Posted at 11:11 AMh in Events by

The MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History will host the exhibition “War Comes Home: The Legacy,” featuring correspondence from almost every major conflict in U.S. history to reveal how war changes lives, families and communities.

The exhibition is open to the public free of charge through Wednesday, June 1.

Rich with historic and contemporary letters, it offers an intimate perspective into the thoughts and emotions of veterans and their families upon a soldier’s homecoming.

“War Comes Home: The Legacy” is a partnership between California Humanities, the California State Library and Exhibit Envoy. It is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bay Tree Fund, the Whitman Fund and the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian. The exhibition has been brought to the Little Rock museum through the generosity of the Arkansas Humanities Council and is available to other Arkansas venues through March 2018.

“War Comes Home: The Legacy” explores the joys and hardships that returning soldiers and their families face during homecoming, as expressed through private letters and email correspondence. Spanning conflicts from the Civil War through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and displayed on 13 interpretive panels, the exhibition explores the shared themes of wartime separation, the adjustment of life back at home and the cost of war.

The MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, operated under the Little Rock Parks and Recreation Department, relates the military heritage of Arkansas and its citizens to a diverse and widespread audience. Located in the historic Arsenal Building in MacArthur Park – one of Central Arkansas’s oldest surviving structures and the birthplace of one of this country’s foremost military heroes – the museum collects, preserves and interprets the state’s rich military past from its territorial period to the present.