[imgcontainer] [img:winslowhomer530.jpg] [source]Metropolitan Museum of Art[/source] ‘Prisoners from the Front’ by Winslow Homer (1866), depicting the capture of Confederate officers by Union general Francis Channing Barlow at Petersburg, Virginia.
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From Memorial Day through Labor Day, 1300 museums across the U.S. will offer free admission to all active duty military personnel and their families.
The coast-to-coast array includes urban eminences like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (which owns the Winslow Homer painting pictured above), highly specialized collections in rural locales like the New Hampshire Telephone Museum in Warner, New Hampshire, and – most fittingly – military and historical institutions, for example the National D-Day Memorial, in Bedford, Virginia.
[imgcontainer right] [img:bluerock420.jpg] [source]Crater Rock Museum[/source]
Cavansite ‘Ravin Cavan’ — from the collection at Crater Rock
Museum, Central Point, Oregon, one of the Blue Star Museums.
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The Blue Star Museums program, under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), began last year. It drew more than 300,00 members of the military and their families in 2010.
NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman expressed great pride in the program: “Blue Star Museums recognizes and thanks our military families for all they are doing for our country, and simultaneously begins young people on a path to becoming life-long museum goers.”
See this link for information on acceptable IDs for free admission.
Botanical gardens, art collections, nature centers, historic homes… the list goes on. Check this map for the museums within striking distance of your summer travels.
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