National VA History Center

Curator Corner blog - Happy Halloween! As a tribute to all the dolls that make our hearts race, this edition of the Curator Corner features procedure dolls from the recently acquired group of early 20th century artifacts from Mountain Home VA Medical Center in eastern Tennessee. Some of these dolls are super creepy.

The National VA History Center is progressing in the early stages at the Dayton VA Medical Center campus - but artifact collection to fill its rooms has successfully been underway. Less than a year after celebrating the Center's establishment, VAs History and Archive team transferred the first artifact into its collection - a 19th Century Bible from the campus chapel.

As the reality of a global pandemic set in, historians, archivists, and museum professionals recognized the need to collect artifacts telling the story of VA's efforts to care for Veterans against COVID-19. Part of that collection fell to the newly established VA History Office which led to its first agency-wide historical preservation effort.

How does VA do it? Many people interested in VA's archives have asked excellent questions about archiving and what that team does, how will it expand, and what can be accomplished. As those answers have come clearer at the National VA History Center, Archives Month seemed to be an excellent time to discuss them.

Curator Corner blog - So the VA is getting its own museum? That's pretty cool! But what goes into finding the right pieces to display from the collection? Or how to even start a museum from scratch? The National VA History Center's curator Kurt Senn tells you how. He's new on the gig, but he's experienced, so he knows a thing or two about this. Take a peek at what he's doing now to start this VA museum!