Editorial: Before next war, check out Vets art museum

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5-25-07 National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, 1801 S. Indiana.....Exhibit of paintings by Aaron Hughes for Tom Mcnamee Memorial Day column.....Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Updated: March 1, 2012 8:21AM

Again, our nation is talking about going to war, this time in Iran, though we are weary from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And again, the enormous sums our nation spends on weapons and soldiers is a matter of hot political debate, with critics such as Newt Gingrich insisting that virtually any cut to the growth of the Pentagon’s budget, as proposed by the Obama administration, would be a dangerous lowering of our guard.

And then there is this development, which we believe is not inconsequential to the first two:

The National Veterans Art Museum in the South Loop is closing — forever if a new home cannot be found. This, we believe, would be a great loss for Chicago, though the museum in its 31 years has seldom been heavily visited. Perhaps, we have always speculated, the experience is too intense and the location is too out of the way.

Or perhaps we Americans would rather not be reminded, too closely and too emotionally, of the human cost of war, because that is what the museum never fails to do.

As an institution, the museum takes no position on the rightness of any war or of war in general — to be sure, the vets who work and create there are not all of a single mind — but it demands that we know and weigh the price we pay.

Our hope is that the museum will find a new home quickly, before its lease in a Chicago Park District building runs out in April. And our wish would be for every saber-rattling politician to visit at least once.

Over the years, the museum has presented some powerful works of art by veterans, often but not always on themes of conflict. As Aaron Hughes, an artist and curator at the museum, told Chicago Sun-Times reporter Kara Spak, the artists often are seeking to heal themselves through their work, but also exploring “what humanity is, the grossest parts of humanity and the most beautiful parts of humanity.”

We recall a 2007 exhibit of Hughes’ work. We recall a painting of two soldiers posing in front of a destroyed Humvee. That was Hughes and a buddy, soldiers in Iraq, young and full of bravado. They looked like the students who ride the L to community college, like the lean young men who stock the shelves at Jewel.

But a sergeant blew his top when he saw the two soldiers posing.

“The sergeant was getting pissed,” Hughes wrote in a diary entry posted on the wall next to the painting. “Said those were good soldiers in that humvee, and we shouldn’t f - - - with the remains. I guess it was remains, in a way. I guess it seemed like that humvee was a corpse waiting to get buried.”

Hughes was beginning to get it. The soldiers killed in the Humvee had been young men, too. But they would never come home, never ride the L again, never stock shelves at a Jewel. They would never pick up a paint brush and make powerful art.

Sometimes we must fight. But we would march off to war less often if only we knew, down to our toes, the price we’d pay.

Chicago needs the National Veterans Art Museum.