Collection Pause
We are putting a temporary pause on accepting donations to the museum collection. We will resume accepting donations after the staff completes an accreditation review with the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). The AAM accreditation process involves all staff and receiving accreditation means that the Wisconsin Veterans Museum adheres to the highest of standards and ethics in the museum profession. We hope you understand the need for this pause and why donating to an accredited museum is important.
We expect to resume collecting on March 1, 2024.
What You Can Do to Prep Your Donation
In the meantime, please know we remain very interested in hearing your Wisconsin-related military story when we return to collecting. To help us better understand your or your veteran’s military service, in addition to the items you wish to donate, please gather as much information as possible from the following list:
- Full Name
- Birth and death dates and locations
- Father and mother
- Spouse
- Children
- Places they lived
- Education
- Branch they served in
- Units they served in
- Rank they achieved
- Honors or awards
- Service years
- Occupation after service
- Relatives who may have served
What We Are Collecting
We are always looking for artifacts with a good story as well as photographs of Wisconsin veterans in
uniform or from their time in service. This is what we are interested in collecting:
- Photo of the veteran in uniform or while serving
- Letters, diaries, journals, notebooks, scrapbooks the veteran put together
- Papers pertaining to their service specifically
- Work uniforms of later eras, especially1980s-present
- Training manuals and readings from later eras, especially1980s-present
- Dog tags
- Purple Hearts and valor awards
- Personal items and souvenirs that have a story with them
- Anything handmade or customized by the veteran
What We Are Less Interested in Collecting
We have ample artifacts like these in the collection:
- Dress uniforms from the WWI and WWII eras
- Medals from the WWI and WWII eras except for those noted on the other list
- German souvenirs from WWI and German and Japanese souvenirs from WWII
Why?
There are over 331,000 living veterans in Wisconsin and even more that served that have passed, especially from World War II. This means the museum has many examples of items that were regularly issued to service members and the museum must be selective with new artifacts it accepts. We hope you understand.
If you still have questions, email veterans.museum@dva.wisconsin.gov.