For history buffs, there are more than two hundred Blue Star Museums that shed light on America’s varied history and heritage. Famous lives are chronicled at dozens of house museums, like the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut. Other larger museums cover broader themes, such as the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Also known as the National Cowboy Museum, it is currently hosting the Prix de West, an invitational art exhibit of more than 300 Western paintings and sculpture by contemporary artists. Forward-looking history museums abound: the Museum of Space History, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, contains exhibitions on the original rocket scientist, Robert Goddard, and a mock-up of the International Space Station.

Several museums joined the Blue Star honor roll this week, among them, The Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles, California. Housed in the last surviving building in the City’s original Chinatown, the museum shares the history and continuing contributions of Chinese Americans through exhibits and educational programs. Currently showing, Hollywood Chinese: The Arthur Dong Collection, an assortment of movie memorabilia with vivid examples of how the Chinese have been imagined in the movies during the last century.

The National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families, and more than 900 Blue Star Museums nationwide have launched Blue Star Museums to offer free museum admission to active duty military and their families through Labor Day, September 6, 2010. Learn more about participating museums by visiting the Blue Star Museums page.

Contact:
Sally Gifford
202-682-5606
giffords@arts.gov