Located outside Kansas City and home to 2,500 soldiers, Fort Leavenworth houses a 4,000-piece art collection that few people know exists. The U.S. Army never intended to hide these collections and never intended them to be housed.
Now, thanks to the owners of a local art gallery, part of the collection is on public display under the title: "The Art of War, the Gift of Peace."
In 1894, Originally designed to educate domestic officers in the science and art of war, the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth opened its doors to foreign officers. Since then, more than 8,000 people have graduated from the Command and Staff Officers Course, including three current heads of state: King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore and President Paul Ka of Rwanda. Game, Generals George Marshall, George Patton, and Colin Powell.
This year, 119 students from 91 countries will spend nearly a year attending accredited master's programs to earn a master's degree in military arts and sciences. They can also choose to study additional courses at a nearby university, leading to one of 12 further degrees. Officers in foreign militaries with a rank equivalent to that of a U.S. Army major are eligible to apply within their respective countries; the U.S. Department of State and Defense can select which countries can send students. "When I came through, we had no Vietnamese officers and we had no Euro-Eastern European Group officers." We have Iranian graduates, but now we are not very friendly to Iran. The oldest known gift is a portrait of Robert E. Lee given by the Daughters of the Confederacy, but the first cataloged gift was a plaque given by Poland in 1943.
Over the years, if not most of the esteemed officers presented something to the academy upon graduation, most of the items disappeared into storage. Ordinary items aren't given a second thought until they become part of the furniture, a few carefully chosen ones decorate private offices and hallways.
Intricately carved ivory galleons, gilded swords, and handcrafted pewter vases join silently among the jewelry, bronze statuettes, and detailed ebony masks in the storeroom. Ramo said that regardless of the material or value of the gift, as a *** employee he was obligated to accept the gift and ensure it was properly sorted and stored. Not to mention.
So, gift collections have grown in the darkness of storerooms for decades.
"Think of where they kept the Ark of the Covenant in the Indiana Jones movies," said Rameau, himself a retired Army colonel. He added: "KDSPE" is a very valuable work. "KDSPE" "KDSPs", "Taxpayers have taken back the military bands...the last thing they have to fund is the Art Curator at the Command and General Staff College" "KDSPE" "KDSPs", but the CGSC does have a non-profit foundation, Funded by grants and grants. Private donations, something the military doesn't do. The foundation didn't consider the object its own gift, but now, thanks to local art gallery staff, is interested in finding out what's in their collection. “KDSPE” “KDSPs” In 2015, foundation board members invited Todd Weiner, owner of a gallery of the same name in Kansas City to view the collection. Weiner asked two of his staff members, Megan Dorhorn and Bobby Di Candeloro, to accompany him, whose experience in archival research and collection management made them ideal candidates to take on the tasks they faced. A daunting task.
"We were blown away by what we saw. They had amazing talent from different media on the other side of the world," Weiner recalled.
Their original idea was the military Not sure what they had — they classified the three-story stained-glass windows as "durable goods,"
But Ramo said the Army knew what it had and was eager to share. >
“This is not our thing. ". It belongs to the military, and the military belongs to the taxpayers. "The taxpayers should be able to see it, appreciate it, know what it is and where it comes from. ”
However, the challenge of identifying all items and their origins is still in the early stages of being solved; each item raises multiple questions about how the giver selected the item, and where he or she selected it. After the first meeting, Weiner came up with a suggestion that he wanted to create a better catalog system and make the gifts available for public viewing. He recalls being nearly laughed out of the building. His team spent three months without hesitation learning about the collection and building a case to support greater care for the gifts.
"As a result of the conflict in the Gulf. As an American who didn't serve and grow up, I kept asking myself, what can I do to give back to my country," Weiner said. "When this came to light, this monumental effort, it made people It felt natural, it felt right, and it felt timely.
" Detail from a large plaque to the left of Sri Lanka (Reed Hoffman) - Megan Dohorgan, Bobby Di Candeloro and Todd Weiner, Todd Weiner Gallery owners, looking at some of the items in the collection (Reed Huffman) From left to right - Bobby Di Candeloro, Megan Dorhorn and Todd Weiner. Todd Weiner Gallery owner, looking at gifts from Israel Defense Forces officers in 2007 (Reed Hoffman) Some of the gifts are flags or fabrics, which are also being sorted and organized (Reed Hoffman). ) Not surprisingly, some of the gifts from various officers were swords (Reed Hoffman) You can see some in the atrium of the Lewis and Clark Center at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas. Gifts on display in boxes. Some of the boxes in the photo contain gifts, such as the one in the upper left corner, while others contain materials from the Border Guards Museum (Reed Hofmann) Of course, military headdresses are also in the collection. Part. (Reed Hoffman) In a room in Eisenhower Hall, gifts are arranged in rows by country. (Reed Hoffman) Major Jose Aguirre of Spain is attending the U.S. One of the visiting officers at the Army Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas, talked about how he decided what gifts to give when he arrived. (Reed Huffman) On display at the Lewis and Clark Center. (Reed Huffman)
Three months later, Weiner made his plans more official and made the team official. For a year and a half, they volunteer their time to the collection, with the Weiner Gallery assuming financial responsibility, until—they hope—private donations begin to come in.
As they learn more about each piece, including with recent graduates. Graduates talk about their gifts, Weiner's staff will load Spanish Airborne Brigade's Maj. Jose Aguirre, a sophomore at the academy's Superior Military Academy, said he was in the same spirit at the graduation ceremony A gift was given to the host of the party and a 10-inch-tall replica of the brigade's emblematic Almogarba statue, commemorating the 13th and 14th century Spanish soldier, was chosen. To date, the gift is in the CGSC main building. On display in the hallway.
During a break, Aguirre explained the importance of Almogarvar to the Spanish paratroopers. "It's like our warrior spirit," he said. We are inspired by the way we fight and the will to fight. They used to say wake up iron! They pounded the shields to create weapons
Although it was his gift of choice, Aguirre said it was given by all recent Spanish students. Aguirre said etiquette and diplomacy are fundamental to school ethos, so it would be indecent to discuss who spends money on gifts. This in turn puts any registrar of the school's collection at a disadvantage rather than an accredited institution like the nearby Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. While in the case of Weiner Gallery’s team, this information adds to the story of the work, not all information can be gathered—even directly from the source.
A painting will also be commissioned from each category – half of the 70 paintings entered the collection this way. Gifts will also be given by members of the Academy's International Hall of Fame. Sometimes, American civilians give some kind of keepsake to commemorate a special occasion.
Rameau thinks the college is doing a pretty good job of dealing with its surplus of treasures, but admits improvements are needed.
The college’s gift storage facility is just over 1,600 square feet and has a large capacity. Arranged alphabetically by country of origin, the wooden bookshelf is divided into approximately 250 small compartments, each wrapped in paper. On the top of most bookshelves is a blank sheet of paper with the name of the country and corresponding flag.
Di Candeloro explained that she and Dohogne had each item packaged and numbered shortly after being allowed in, but they knew it still fell short of best practices. The list of activities to redesign the storage facility required more funding than the Weiner Gallery could afford.
Hundreds of unlabeled, dust-covered items are displayed in glass cases in the hallway that appear to be an assortment of plaques, sailboats and weapons. Weiner said his team will be curating and labeling the new exhibits throughout the school this month.
A quick look at the "I" section of the pantry shows that Israel has given away 24 gifts; Italy has given away 57. While many paper packages are marked to correspond to a number in the Army's existing database, the gifts are difficult to locate on demand. Weiner's team will correct one of those shortcomings.
Dohogne said she and her colleagues have been working hard to educate the collection's handlers on how to archive safely. "We found a letter in a wooden box. Wood degrades paper very quickly, so take it out and put it in mylar strips, that kind of thing," Dolhorn said of their progress.
She stood next to a table covered with gifts from various continents that she and Di Candeloro had taken off the shelf. So far, the two had looked at about 100 items. , but don’t know much about these 7 items.
Dohogne picked up a 9-inch wooden paddle with a face carefully carved on it. The information on the register reads: "Black wood weapon, intricately carved, mother of pearl inlay, plate on handle, 1961, given by Major Cecil C. Jordan."
The team did a little research , learned it was a Maori weapon and the officer was from New Zealand. It turned out that the paddle was not a paddle at all, but a short stick called a kotiate—a rough translation: to cut or divide the liver.
Art historians haven't figured out what type of wood it was carved from, but that's next. "Once we knew what the object was, we started looking at the materials used in the area," Di Candeloro said.
The mystery of the paddle was partially solved, the database was updated, and a gallery tutorial was created Information card, the card will be returned to storage until Weiner organizes a public exhibition of it or decides to place it in a glass case in a classroom hallway.
In 2007, CGSC built a new building, and the army hired an interior decorator to display the paintings. Rameau laughed and said it might be the equivalent of organizing library books by size and color.
Weiner estimates that to fully fund the project, approximately $3 million will be needed, half of which will go to the CGSC Foundation’s annual budget to support their outreach programs. Weiner said the remainder of the funds will be used to properly collect and create a searchable digital database for public use, as well as a documentary and large-scale picture book, and any resulting revenue will flow to the college and Foundation, these exhibitions have been carefully curated to reflect the spaces they host to maximize public engagement. For example, an upcoming public library exhibition incorporates research ideas. Dohogne and Di Candeloro select gifts with little information about them, and they will act as investigators looking for patrons who came into contact with the objects.
Referring to a gauze doll with a backpack, the team hopes library patrons will recall playing with a similar style doll at their grandparents’ house and volunteer information about its country or origin. clue.
As each artifact is opened and presented to the American public, members of both Fort Leavenworth and the Weiner Gallery hope they can serve as a way to connect the two communities and tell a story about America and the world Decades of strong diplomatic ties elsewhere