Online virtual exhibit displays mementos left at Vietnam wall
A virtual exhibition launched Thursday gives the public an unprecedented look at the items visitors have left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington over the past 30 years — letters, photographs, even prosthetic legs and a custom-made motorcycle.
Since the memorial was opened to the public in 1982, it has become tradition for visitors to leave items at the base of the wall, a national monument that’s about 250 feet long. Each night, the National Park Service collects the objects; decades later, nearly 400,000 items are housed here in a massive warehouse.
The new virtual collection, which is hosted on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund’s website in a scrolling gallery, features images of roughly 500 items, and more will be added over time. Viewers can click on individual items to learn details, such as when it was left and whether it’s connected to someone specific. If something is related to a veteran whose name is on the wall, viewers can click to learn more about that person.
“One of the things that’s so unique about this collection is the fact that it says as much about the effect that the wall has on our visitors as it does about Vietnam and the Vietnam era,” said Jason Bain, the senior collections curator for the memorial fund. “Visitors to the wall seem to have powerful, emotive, cathartic experiences.”
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund plans an education center, where 4,000 to 6,000 items will be on public display. The cen- ter, which will be underground near the wall on the National Mall, is likely to open in 2020.
One of the most well-known objects in the park service’s collection is a custom-made motorcycle.
Left on Memorial Day in 1995 by Vietnam veterans from Wisconsin, the motorcycle was created to remember 37 soldiers from Wisconsin who were prisoners of war or missing in action. The motorcycle features 37 dog tags and is hand-painted with scenes from Vietnam.