To commemorate Veterans Day, 11 November, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia is granting free admission to military veterans and active personnel from 11-13 November. The museum is currently showing World War I and American Art (until 9 April 2017), the first major exhibition to look at how American artists portrayed experiences of the war, from the trenches to the home front to Armistice Day celebrations. It includes works by 80 artists, such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley and George Bellows, and also demonstrates how American artists adopted—and adapted—European Modernism. American audiences have the chance to see works like John Singer Sargent’s Gassed (1919), on loan from the Imperial War Museums in London, which shows an evacuation checkpoint scene of British soldiers temporarily blinded by mustard gas, as witnessed by the artist—a demonstration of multiple perspectives on war, from camaraderie to the sacrifice of a generation.
