Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur
Beginning April 6 and running through May 25, 2015 the Museum will host the exhibition Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow: Living with the Atomic Bomb, 1945-1965 which explores the ways that Americans experienced the atomic threat as part of their daily lives. The show features more than 75 original objects from the era ranging from science fiction movie posters to Civil Defense signs to Atomic Age toys. In conjunction with this exhibition, Museum staff plan to collect oral history recollections of local residents who worked in civil defense or recall doing duck and cover drills in school.
Later, Beginning in June of 2015 and running through the end of August, the Museum will host the traveling exhibition Marking Time: Voyage to Vietnam. This exhibit centers around graffiti drawn on the canvas bunk bottoms of the troop ship General Nelson M. Walker by U.S. soldiers headed for Vietnam in 1966 and 1967. The graffiti was discovered in 1997 during a visit to the ship as a possible location for filming the World War II movie The Thin Red Line. The Walker was scrapped at Star Metals in Brownsville, Texas in 2005 at which time these canvas bunk bottoms and other artifacts were removed from the ship. It is the intention of the Museum to use this exhibition as a vehicle for recording oral histories of Vietnam War veterans’ experiences on their own voyages to Vietnam.
For information, people should check out the Museum's website http://www.museumofthegulfcoast.org/ and click on the 'Contact Us' button or call the main number 409-982-7000 for general information.
The Museum of the Gulf Coast has agreed to serve as local co-host for one of the Texas Historical Commission’s upcoming "When the Lone Star State met the Iron Curtain: Recollections of Texas in the Cold War" oral history training workshops. Once funding for the workshop is secured, the Texas Historical Commission will post the date and times for the workshop. For now, please visit our Texas in the Cold War webpage for more information about the overall project.
