Cleve Jones is a human rights activist who created the idea of a memorial quilt commemorating people who have died of AIDS. The first time the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed was October 11, 1987, when it was laid out in full on the…

S. Dillon Ripley was the eighth Secretary of the Smithsonian, serving from 1964-1984. Under his leadership, the Smithsonian Institution expanded and revitalized. Ripley believed museums should be vital sites of learning and engagement, actively…

Diane Carlson Evans is a Vietnam veteran who was the driving force behind the creation of the Vietnam Women's Memorial. Motivated to include the voices of approximately 265,000 military women of the Vietnam era whose experiences were overlooked or…

Douglas Cardinal (Blackfoot), Johnpaul Jones (Cherokee/Choctaw), Lou Weller (Cado), Donna House (Diné/Oneida), and Ramona Sakiestewa (Hopi) were consultants on the concept and design of the National Museum of the American Indian. They represented a…

Glenna Goodacre is the designer and sculptor of the Vietnam Women's Memorial, dedicated in November 1993. Goodacre wanted the memorial's figures to show despair, dedication, and hope of the nurses and servicewomen serving in Vietnam.

Maya Lin won the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1981. She was an undergraduate student majoring in architecture at Yale University when her design was chosen from nearly 1,500 entries. She proposed an abstract design in the…

Decorated Vietnam veteran Jan Scruggs is the founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. He conceived the memorial as a tribute to all who served during one of the longest wars in American history. He started the project with $2,800…

The Vietnam Women's Memorial opened in 1993 as the first monument on the National Mall dedicated to women's military service. The memorial project began in 1984 to honor more than 7,500 American women Vietnam veterans. The memorial features 3…

The Three Soldiers statue sits a few feet from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. This statue was added after the Wall opened to complement it and to offer an alternative memorial for critics who disliked the non-traditional design of the Wall. The…

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall opened in 1982 to honor more than 58,000 American casualties lost in the Vietnam War. Two black walls form a wide V that list the names of each person missing or dead in chronological order. Diamonds appear beside…