Artifacts of War

Designed by Maya Lin as a space for personal reflection rather than heroic triumph, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated in 1982, invited intimate acts of remembrance from the beginning. Visitors left deeply personal objects—sometimes thousands in a single week—at the wall: worn combat boots, dog tags, handwritten letters, news clippings, medals, teddy bears, snapshots, and even a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Over time, these objects became an extraordinary archive of grief, protest, love, and unresolved memory.

The National Park Service assumed responsibility for collecting, preserving, and interpreting these materials. Today, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection (VIVE) contains nearly half a million objects. This growing archive has prompted essential questions: Why do visitors leave such emotionally charged, often private objects in a public space? What do these artifacts reveal about the war, its contested legacy, and its enduring impact on a generation of individuals and families?

In Artifacts of War, author Paulette G. Curtis offers insight into the expression of remembrance, resistance, and national memory at one of America's most powerful memorial sites through the lens of its institutional caretaker, the National Park Service. Part history, part ethnography and cultural analysis, this book offers a new way in which to understand the VIVE. It will appeal to Vietnam War historians, scholars of material culture and American collective memory, and general readers interested in the memorial.