Category: Museum of the American Military Family
E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE UNDER PRESSURE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“The motto, E Pluribus Unum, means ‘out of many, one.’ The museum’s latest project E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE Under Pressure — gives title and substance to a newly-released multi-faceted study exploring if the many do indeed become one,” Dr. Circe Olson Woessner, Executive Director of the Museum of the American Military Family (MAMF) explains. “E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE under Pressure curates, in one volume, stories from hundreds of military-connected individuals based on their service experience seen through the lenses of GRAICE (Gender; Religion; rAce; Identity; Culture; and Ethnicity.).”
The 276-page book results from MAMF’s most ambitious undertaking to date. The museum team and the museum’s Veteran•Family•Community Collaborative used an anonymous survey and written essays to answer a series of questions based on a simple theme: How do MANY become ONE without losing ONESELF. “How,” Woessner asks, “do we unite in service and still keep our personhood?”
The “GRAICE Project” involved hundreds of people, including a team of university anthropologists who analyzed the data and sorted it into specific categories in line with topics in the book. In addition to the book, the museum will present a series of podcasts and social media stories.
The book contains art by Brandon Palma, a military brat artist, and compositions by the museum’s two Writers-in-Residence, Valerie Bonham Moon and Connie Kinsey, who wrote essays on single-word prompts. Woessner adds that “almost two dozen other military-connected authors aged 9 to 91 also wrote essays on the same topics –almost like chapter bookends– different generations and perspectives, and these varied voices tell their stories, the good, the bad, the in-between, and the truly awful!”
“During the first 14 years of my life,” Connie Kinsey says, “I had 24 home addresses and experienced things much different from my civilian counterparts. This project is a serious look at life in a military environment as experienced by Brats like me. The stories are heartwarming, thought-provoking, and insightful. This book should be read in small doses, picked up, set down, digested, and revisited.” Valerie Bonham Moon adds, “It’s also a professional analysis of contemporaneous social pressure that affects the people affiliated with the services.”
The project was grant-funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New Mexico Humanities Council, and the McCune Foundation.
Woessner says that proceeds from this book and other MAMF publications help support the museum’s literary projects and residency programs. To buy a copy of E Pluribus Unum, please click the link:
MAMF’s New Projects
The museum will be releasing E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE Under Pressure in late July 2022. This is part of a multimedia project exploring Gender, Religion, Race, Identity, Culture and Ethnicity in the military/family. In October 2022, look for the companion anthology to Schooling with Uncle Sam to be published. Host Nation Hospitality explores relationships and memories of life overseas. Additionally, the museum will launch its exhibit by the same name in late fall 2022.
SHOUT! This weekend in Albuquerque
To purchase tickets click the link:Here are some great reads for you history buffs
It’s April 30th–and that means–
ONE DAY ONLY at the Museum!
New display at MAMF
Happening in Albuquerque!
MILITARY FAMILY MUSEUM TURNS ELEVEN
Tijeras, NM – “Pandemic or not, permanent home or not, we’ve made it through eleven years,” said Dr. Circe Olson Woessner, Founder and Director of the Museum of the American Military Family (MAMF). “We’ve won national awards, published books, produced documentary films and a play, conducted classes and workshops, book and film discussion programs, and lived our goal to honor military families and preserve their legacies while sharing their stories and educating the public.”
Woessner says she is grateful to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History for hosting MAMF’s first-ever exhibit. “In fact,” Woessner says, “the Nuclear staff taught us how to be a museum. We were just a handful of educators, civil servants, and military veterans none of whom had had any museum experience.”
On March 23rd that early connection continues with an exhibit of information panels about women inventors in honor of Women’s History Month done in cooperation with the Nuclear Museum. “Even though we’re a small volunteer organization,” she says, “we manage to host rotating exhibits on various subjects and maintain permanent exhibits on what it’s like to be a military kid or a military spouse and the experience of working in or attending schools in the world-wide Defense Department School system.”
This year, MAMF would like military-connected families from all over to send a birthday greeting or postcard to the museum, sharing a short military memory for its “Postcard Project” collection. Over the decade, the museum has collected hundreds of postcards, each telling a short memory about military/family life—memories of WWII to the present.
MAMF maintains a special collections library which includes folios of first-hand stories by military veterans and family members going back to World War I and has artifacts collected by teachers and military family members from all parts of the world. Woessner explains that MAMF has been fortunate to have support from “New Mexico Arts, the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association for State and Local History, and many donors and friends.”
MAMF publications and social media outlets proclaim the museum’s values – to welcome everyone regardless of age, ancestry, disability, national or ethnic origin, race, religious belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, political belief, or veteran status.
Birthday greetings and postcards can be mailed to MAMF at 546B State Hwy 333, Tijeras, NM 87059