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Artists Then And Now Respond To Vietnam War

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“Born in the U.S.A.” “Galveston.” Full Metal Jacket. Apocalypse Now. The Deer Hunter. Miss Saigon. The Best and the Brightest.

American popular culture abounds with references to the Vietnam War.

What about fine art?

Two exhibits at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts explore the conflict, both through the perspective of American artists living during the war years and of artists with roots in Southeast Asia.

Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965–1975 comes to Minneapolis from Washington, D.C. where it was organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. To accompany this critically acclaimed show, Mia presents Artists Reflect: Contemporary Views on the American War.

Artists Reflect consists of artwork by 11 artists of Vietnamese and Hmong backgrounds who are from, or families are from, Laos or Vietnam and whose personal lives and families were directly impacted by the American War,” Robert Cozzolino, Patrick and Aimee Butler Curator of Paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, said. “Most of the work in this installation dates from the past 10 years; it is an opportunity to see the responses that this younger generation (most born after 1970) have made to the conflict.”

Through painting, sculpture, drawing, textile, photography, video and other mediums, these artists reflect on migration, memory, the effect of violence on the landscape and on communities, healing and trauma, while bringing attention to the war’s living effects on the population most affected by its long history.

Artists Respond represents how artists working in the U.S. made art about the war while it was unfolding and what they did individually and collectively to speak out about the war and try to stop it,” Cozzolino said.

The exhibition spans the period from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision to deploy U.S. ground troops to South Vietnam in 1965 to the fall of Sài Gòn 10 years later.

T. C. Cannon (1946–1978, USA), Judy Chicago (b. 1939, USA), Leon Golub (1922–2004, USA), Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Japan), Bruce Nauman (b. 1941, USA), Yoko Ono (b. 1933, Japan) and Faith Ringgold (b. 1930, USA) are among the 58 artists contributing to the nearly 100 works featured in Artists Respond. The exhibit constitutes the most comprehensive examination of the contemporary impact of the Vietnam War on American art.

“Both shows have at their heart a basic impulse by artists to use their talents to draw attention to things they felt strongly about socially and politically, mainly human rights issues and acting on empathy for the soldiers drafted and the civilians caught up in the conflict,” Cozzolino said. “These issues cut across centuries and cultures.”

And museums.

The Missoula Art Museum in Missoula, Montana currently displays the work of Vietnam Veteran Rick Bartow (1946–2016).

Bartow, a member of the Mad River Band Wiyot, served in the Vietnam War immediately after college. Awarded a Bronze Star for his service, Bartow worked as a teletype operator and hospital musician in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971.

Rick Bartow was deeply empathetic… he witnessed firsthand the effects of armed conflict on human lives. The effect of being surrounded by those who were profoundly impacted by their injuries, lost limbs, or died, had a strong emotional impact on him. This subsequently impacted his personal life and he struggled with feelings of guilt or shame.

Brandon Reintjes, Senior Curator, Missoula Art Museum

By the time he finished his tour, he suffered post-traumatic stress and turned to substance abuse. After a period of recovery, making art allowed Bartow to confront difficult parts of his history.

“Bartow’s work comes from such a place of humanity,” Brandon Reintjes, Senior Curator, Missoula Art Museum, said. “While it is specific to Bartow’s experiences as a veteran, as a Wiyot artist, as a person in recovery, as a stroke survivor, it touches on powerful universal themes.”

Bartow is known for his large-scale paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, notably, Always Here, a monument commissioned by The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and installed on the National Mall in Washington.

Art is a constant through human history. So, too, is war. The participants and locations change, the suffering does not.

“While the artists (in Artists Repond and Artists Reflect) are focused on that specific conflict and its human impact, the issues are perpetually with us in different parts of the world because wherever there is war there will be displacement of people, forced migration, a refugee crisis, the movement and settlement of people in new places, the tension that occurs even in a good outcome regarding resettlement and the loss of lives in the process,” Cozzolino said. “Some of the artists who were affected by the war in Vietnam (or Laos) represented in the show are now turning their attention to these contemporary refugee situations with empathy and as a means to draw attention to the human impact.”

Artists Respond and Artists Reflect can be seen at the Minneapolis Institute of Art through January 5, 2020.

The Missoula Art Museum presents Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain through February 15, 2020.

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