Art therapy with military active duty and veterans has been an important part of their healing throughout MTFs, VAs, and even in the community. One such program is Art for Vets that is offered through an art museum in New Hampshire. Interestingly, one of my former supervisees, Jackie, was interviewed for this article as she talks about how art is an important part of healing for service members and veterans from trauma, moral injury, and other issues that stem from military service.
Museum’s therapeutic art programme helps military veterans
find their voices
Art for Vets initiative at Currier Museum of Art in the US
encourages personal expression under the care of a full-time art therapist
29 November 2024
The Currier Museum of Art consulted veterans for its 2013
exhibition Visual Dispatches from the Vietnam War, where they
also acted as tour guides. This project was a catalyst for the ongoing Art for
Vets programme
Photo: courtesy Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New
Hampshire
“If I feel depressed and I need to redirect, acrylics are
going to be good because it’s longer term—acrylic is a paint you can go to and
do some work on to self-regulate,” says the retired army special operations
major David Potter, a 28-year veteran who served missions in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Africa. Repeated blast exposures caused brain injuries in combat for which
he received the Purple Heart, but which also devastated many aspects of his
life. His road to recovery has included both traditional and alternative
therapies to heal his body and mind.
Potter has been participating in the art and wellness
experiences through the Art for Vets programme at the Currier Museum of Art
since his full-time move to Manchester, New Hampshire, in 2020. He has found
great satisfaction in creating his own colour palette, watching the canvas
absorb his paints and developing the skills of an artist. Beyond these hands-on
skills, he says the programme helps veterans better understand their own
emotions, learn new ways to self-regulate and engage in a hobby that helps redirect
them if they are struggling.
Potter is not alone. A recent study found that one in five veterans from the US wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan suffer from serious depression or post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD). It is estimated that one in four in the US military face mental health
challenges. And more than 485,000 service members were diagnosed with
traumatic brain injury between 2000 and 2023.
“There’s a lot of challenges and a lot of isolation,” says
Lucie Amaro Chmura, the Currier’s art therapist. While not all veterans
struggle with mental health issues, many find re-entry challenging. She says
that the military community has a shared experience that civilians cannot
comprehend. “Part of the way I developed the programme is really to support
more connection with the community, within the veteran community but also to
support integration within the non-veteran community,” she says.
The Currier is one of very few museums to offer veterans and
active military members a suite of free programming under the care of a
full-time art therapist. While the museum is cautious to label them as
wellness—not therapy—programmes, its monthly family days, seasonal workshops,
virtual sessions and weekly in-gallery and in-studio art experiences
continually provide a place for veterans to feel seen and valued.
The art is not incidental. The hands-on classes range from
expressive creations using collage and objects found in nature to mixed-media
memoir. They often work off a theme, but Amaro Chmura emphasises that the goal
is less about output and more about the chance to self-reflect, build skills
and share.
Jacqueline Jones, a board-certified art therapist and
founder of Flourish Momentum, developed clinical art therapy services for
military members suffering from traumatic brain injuries and psychological
distress at the Intrepid Spirit Center at Fort Belvoir in Virginia and the
Invisible Wounds Center at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
Jones explains that art is an important tool in healing from
invisible wounds. Trauma can disrupt areas of the brain that process words,
leaving the sufferer unequipped to verbalise their challenges and manage
overwhelming feelings.
“But what you resist persists, and what is genuinely seen
and met and heard naturally transmutes and shifts,” Jones says. Art therapy
allows the essence of what needs to be addressed to come out. “It provides a
pathway to resolve what is underlying the conditions someone is seeking to
improve. I have had clients refer to art therapy as the ‘scalpel to the soul’.
It provides a direct route to what is the underlying issue. Long term, it helps
them create a shift deep down that helps them resolve the grief or trauma or
moral injury.”
Vietnam veterans forged the path
Art for Vets was founded more than a decade ago after an
incredible misstep, says Kurt Sundstrom, the Currier’s senior curator of
collections.
Around 2012, Sundstrom planned a Vietnam war photography
exhibition to explore the lasting power of images such as Eddie Adams’s
prisoner execution and Nick Ut’s napalm girl. He reached out to members of New
Hampshire’s veteran community—proportionally larger than in most states, at
7.7% of the overall population—for input. The meeting did not go well.
“They were pissed,” Sundstrom says. The photographs in the
show, iconic for their depictions of the senseless brutality of war, fuelled an
anti-war, anti-veteran sentiment then, and reopened wounds for those veterans.
Sundstrom rebuilt trust and asked the group to take the lead
on contextualising the show. Visual Dispatches from the Vietnam War ran for
around three months in 2013, with Vietnam veterans serving as tour guides and
then meeting regularly at the museum. The Currier, which prides itself on
community engagement, recognised a population with an unmet need.
Today, around 270 individuals from all branches of the
military are enrolled in the Art for Vets programme, with a retention rate of
98%. Through the monthly Vets Family Day, which includes free lunch and
activities, an additional 600 veteran family members participate annually.
Potter, who also participates in the Combat Veterans
Motorcycle Association, says art is “a cool vehicle” that connects him with
fellow service members while exploring other aspects of his identity. “It helps
me to get a new skill to either regulate myself or to improve my self-esteem,
and also to redefine myself as a civilian.”
- The Art for Vets programme
at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire
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