Exhibition Tour: Fly Marines! The Centennial of Marine Corps Aviation: 1912-2012
Slide Lecture: In Service to the Nation: Arts and Crafts and the Military
National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Arts, Military + Healing: A Collaborative Initiative opens at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum with a welcome by the museum’s associate director, Peter Jakab, and opening remarks by Shannon Maxwell, co-founder of SEMPERMAX Support Fund, and author of Our Daddy Is Invincible and Big Boss Brain?; introductory remarks by Jane Milosch, Office of the Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture, about the week-long AMH workshops and events; and a slide presentation, In Service to the Nation: Arts and Crafts and the Military, by Tara Tappert, Ph.D. Tappert will highlight how the U.S. military, during World War I embraced arts- and crafts-making as rehabilitation for healing and vocational training, and from WWII as recreation to promote well-being.

The afternoon will end with a tour of the exhibition, Fly Marines! The Centennial of Marine Corps Aviation, 1912-2012, led by the exhibition curator at the National Air and Space Museum, Tom Crouch, with the National Museum of the Marine Corps’ aviation curator, Ben Kristy, and art curator, Joan Thomas, as well as with combat artists whose works are represented in the show.

Fly Marines! The Centennial of Marine Corps Aviation, 1912-2012. Honor, Courage, and Commitment are the basic principles embraced by all Marines. Along with a dose of gritty realism, those principles are reflected in the thousands of works of art held by the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Fly Marines! presents a broad selection of works from this collection that documents the history of Marine aviation from its birth and growth in the early 20th century, through the two world wars, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, to the present day. The exhibition also includes several works and artifacts from the collections of the National Air and Space Museum. This exhibition is on view in Gallery 211.

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above image: Sgt. Kristopher Battles in front of his paintings featured in the exhibition, Fly Marines! The Centennial of Marine Corps Aviation: 1912-2912, on display January 14, 2012 through January 6, 2013, at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C. (photo: Kristopher Battles)