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Melissa Starker, Creative Content & PR Manager
Oct 25, 2018
Active military and veterans, enjoy some time in the galleries on us.
The Wexner Center has long offered free access to our galleries to active military members, and each summer we’ve expanded the deal for military families as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’s Blue Star Museums program.
Effective immediately—in time for Veterans Day and this weekend’s opening of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum—the Wex will also provide complimentary gallery access to veterans. Past and current service members, just present your military or veteran ID at the patron services desk for free admission to any Wex exhibition.
The benefits of connecting military and veterans with ways to explore and express their creativity have been documented by numerous studies and first-person accounts of participants, including those who’ve engaged with the center’s Vets at the Wex program.
Established in 2016 in partnership with Columbus’s Chalmers P. Wylie VA Ambulatory Care Center, Vets at the Wex is part of the Wex’s Art & Resilience suite of programs, created to engage the arts in new and fresh ways and informed by facets of the field of positive psychology, which teach that resilience can be learned and strengthened. The free, eight-week program works with veterans and their loved ones, many of whom are living with symptoms of traumatic brain injury or PTSD. It fosters critical thinking and social interaction through exposure to the center’s programming and local artists working in a variety of disciplines.
In a recent survey of Vets at Wex participants, 100 percent of respondents deemed the program “extremely valuable.” Many have praised the chance to share thoughts and experiences with a group of peers in a safe space, as well as the opportunity to “go outside the box” by engaging with contemporary art.
“Vets at the Wex and other Art & Resilience programs intend to build healthy community and broaden thinking,” explains Tracie McCambridge, the center’s Manager of Gallery Teaching and Engagement. “I want all of our participants to have fun and find connection between themselves and the art and artists, and with the other attendees who can empathize with and understand their experiences.”
More information about veteran discounts and visiting the Wex is available here. To learn more about Vets at the Wex and other Art & Resilience programs, contact Tracie at (614) 292-6982 or tmccambridge@wexarts.org.
