Soldiers and Statues

The U.S. Army 'Monuments Men' and Preserving Cultural Heritage

As a native New Englander, I’ve been a fan of Matt Damon’s work ever since Good Will Hunting. And while his best performance of late might be his cameo in Dunkin’s 2024 Super Bowl ad, this week we are looking at a movie he starred in from 2014: The Monuments Men. The film is based on a real U.S. Army unit, the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archive Section of Civil Affairs, assembled in World War II to seek out, find, and preserve art and historical artifacts stolen by the Nazis.

The unit consisted of men and women from across the Allied nations, though the movie focuses on a subset of the American team. In the film, Damon plays James Granger, a character based on James Rorimer, the pre-war curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval collection. The movie closes with the end of the war, but the unit’s legacy continues to have influence here in America and globally.

Artifacts stolen by Nazis and stored in a church during WWII. Source: National Archives.

In 1954 the U.S. helped lead the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property. This led to “the first comprehensive treaty for the protection of cultural property during armed conflict.” America signed the treaty in 1954, though it did not ratify the treaty - due to Cold War considerations among other factors - until 2009.

In 2012, in part prompted by a crisis-response effort that helped preserve over 30,000 cultural artifacts in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake, the Smithsonian set up a Cultural Rescue Initiative (CRI). This team works both in the US and globally during crises, to help protect cultural artifacts and institutions. When parts of Kentucky flooded in 2022, for example, CRI helped salvage the collection at Appalshop, a critical home for Appalachian filmmaking. These missions help communities preserve essential resources and better position cultural assets to play a role in powering recovery efforts.

In 2020, the Army Reserve announced a partnership with CRI to launch the Army Monuments Officer Training program. The first cohort graduated in 2022. These new “monuments officers” fall under the Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command.

The work of such teams is never easy. In a conflict, there’s always tradeoffs and tensions in how to prioritize resources. But time and again history has shown the importance of protecting and preserving art and cultural artifacts. There is something uniquely human in the need to hold onto work that helps us understand who we are, our history and story. Art, even when controversial, can inspire us to reach towards new heights of achievement and challenge us to find new depths of compassion. For the past eighty years, the Army has been a critical part of this story and will continue to play a role in the years to come.

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Additional Resources:

1. Learn more about the CRI here.

2. Check out the Monuments Men and Women Foundation here.

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