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On the World Trade Center Memorial
These are op-eds, letters to the editor and commentaries on the World Trade Center memorial written by Dianne Durante since mid-2002. The most recent are at the top. All material is copyright. To request permission to reprint it, contact Dr. Durante at comments@ForgottenDelights.com .
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Progressing from Mementos to Memorials, Sept. 2004
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Reflecting Absence vs. the Firemen's Memorial (1912), Jan. 2004
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"WTC Memorial Should Celebrate America's Producers," Jan. 2004
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"Landscape as Memorial: Another Sacrifice to Diversity?", Jan. 2004
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New York Sun letter to the editor on the finalists for the WTC memorial, Dec. 2003
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"Monoliths, Wells, Mounds: What Is It We're Trying to Say Here?", July 2002
Progressing from Mementos to Memorials
Only memorials that are representational art can convey a message about what we want to remember regarding 9/11.
Shanksville, Pennsylvania, site of the crash of Flight 93, will open its competition for a memorial this September 11th. Let's pause to consider how we could make that memorial more expressive and more emotionally satisfying than those produced so far.
Pictures of the 9/11 memorials being erected across the country always make me look, with rueful exasperation, at the glittering blue and green ring on my hand. To me the ring is a wonderful memento, charged with meaning because I bought it the day I first snorkeled, after decades of being terrified of the ocean. To anyone else, it’s merely an interesting object.
The 9/11 memorials built or selected to date are like my ring. They serve as reminders for those already familiar with the events of 9/11, but they don't bear a meaning of their own.
Most rely on minimalist landscape architecture, which can sometimes set a mood, but more often dwindles to soothing blandness. You wouldn’t have been shocked to find Reflecting Absence (the winning entry for the World Trade Center site) in a park in Poughkeepsie in 1990.
Lists of the names of the dead, however poignant to those who knew them, don't convey any message to most viewers except that many people died at the same place and time.
Elaborately symbolic constructions such as walls that are the length of one side of the destroyed World Trade Center towers (Jersey City) or a twist of cable in which each wire represents one victim (Valhalla, N.Y.) are academic exercises, meaningless except to those who know the arcane secrets encoded in their design.
Put a pool or a wall or a bunch of trees close enough to a crash site and, yes, they’ll acquire some meaning simply by association. Add a charred I-beam and, yes, you'll make people shudder. But basically all these designs are mementoes rather than memorials.
What’s the purpose of a true memorial? To express what we want to remember about a certain event: what happened, how we felt about it, and/or what we want the future to know about it. In memorials for 9/11, we could focus on the deaths of thousands of innocent victims, the heroism of the rescue workers, the smoking ruins at Ground Zero, the helplessness and rage of Americans as they watched events unfold in Washington, New York and Shanksville. Or we could focus on the achievements of those who died, on our pride and love for them, on our determination to avenge them and never to allow another date in American history to have the horrific associations of September 11th.
Here's the catch, though. To convey any such message to a viewer, a work of art has to be a recognizable object. To convey strength, pride and courage, rusted I-beams won't work; Michelangelo's David will. To convey agony, the crudest medieval crucifixion will work; mere slashes of color will not.
The most effective memorials have always been representational. Think of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Even if you were completely unfamiliar with the man represented, you would know at a glance that he was highly respected: the sculpture is huge, gleaming white, and prominently located. Looking at the seated figure with furrowed brow and bent head, you’d also realize that what was significant about this man were his thoughts, not his physical actions. If you then read the inscriptions inside the building, you could learn more about what he thought, and what the results were. But the statue itself is enough to show what was important about the man, and how Americans felt about him.
At Battery Park in lower Manhattan, the East Coast Memorial (www.ForgottenDelights.com/sculpturemystery/sculpturemonth4.htm) commemorates over 4,500 American servicemen lost in the Atlantic during World War II. Eight huge slabs are inscribed with a list of their names, but the centerpiece of the Memorial is a nine-foot-tall eagle swooping down to lay a wreath on a stylized wave. It’s the eagle that speaks, even to those whose relatives' names are listed on the slabs. The eagle says that Americans grieve for those lost at sea, but remain proud and fierce – willing to fight when necessary.
Given such vivid, evocative examples, why should we limit our 9/11 memorials to pools, trees, charred girders and lists? Let’s hope the jury for the Shanksville competition will be unorthodox enough to progress beyond that, and select a recognizable object that truly evokes the people who died on 9/11, and the values they died for.
Reflecting Absence
vs. the
Firemen's Memorial
(1912): What We're Missing By Having Landscape
Architecture Rather than a Figurative Sculpture as a World Trade Center
Memorial
Instead of staring in bemused boredom at the winning WTC memorial design,
Reflecting Absence, I like to recall one of New York City’s most
evocative memorials. The Firemen’s Memorial at Riverside Drive and
100th St. shows how extraordinarily expressive a representational piece of
sculpture can be.
On its front, a 19-foot wide bronze relief shows firefighters in action. Wild-eyed horses haul a fire-engine to the blaze. At one side, two firemen urgently shift debris, as rubber-neckers crowd to watch.
The bronze relief shows the excitement of firefighting, but the over-life-size marble figures flanking the relief remind us of its risks. On the left, the body of a fallen firefighter is cradled by his wife, who seems frozen in grief. To the right of the relief, another marble woman holds a firefighter's helmet and leans against a fire hydrant. She's about to explain to the young boy whose face is trustingly raised to hers that his father will never come home again.
These images tell us that firefighting is an exciting and rewarding profession, but one that requires the courage to face possible death every day. The inscription tucked away on the back of the relief merely makes the message explicit: "To the men of the Fire Department of the City of New York who died at the call of duty, soldiers in a war that never ends, this memorial is dedicated by the people of a grateful city. Erected 1912."
The location of the Memorial is also significant. It’s set well back from the traffic of Riverside Drive. A semi-circular area in front of the relief holds benches where visitors can contemplate the Memorial. But they can also look away from it, toward the city the firefighters helped preserve.
In contrast to the Firemen’s Memorial, what does Reflecting Absence, the winning WTC memorial, offer? Randomly scattered names, some water, some plants. It evokes none of the concretes that made the WTC distinctive: the bustling offices and shops, the busy workers. And the rescue workers who rushed into the inferno on 9/11 are recognized only by a token badge next to their names.
If we want to have a memorial at the WTC that speaks to us as eloquently as the Firemen’s Memorial, then we must open the competition yet again. This time we must call for entries that are not landscape architecture but representational sculpture, with its myriad possibilities for evoking human values and virtues.
"WTC
Memorial Should Celebrate America's Producers."
The World Trade Center Memorial should be dedicated to life and productivity, not death and destruction.
Published on the Ayn Rand Institute’s website in January 2004.
Landscape as Memorial:
Another Sacrifice to Diversity?
Why is Maya Lin's adamantly expressionless 1982 Vietnam War
Memorial now the model for all memorials, even when the event commemorated
isn't a war that divided the nation for a decade?
Today, too many people look at a sculpture’s eyelids, mouths, hair and other physical features not to understand the emotions, the state of mind, or the activity of the person portrayed, but to determine the person’s race. An artist who represents human figures is in constant danger of being judged politically incorrect.
This is an appalling state of affairs, since human figures are the most eloquent form of visual expression available to humans. While works such as Reflecting Absence can’t be accused of being politically incorrect, neither can they evoke any emotion stronger than bemused boredom.
Finalists in WTC competition
(Letter to the Editor published in the New York Sun, Dec. 2003)
The recent entries for a WTC memorial are like illuminated phone books:
informative, inoffensive, but uninspiring. Although any one of them would
serve as an acceptable backdrop, what the memorial desperately needs is a
sculpture to serve as a focal point, making a statement about those who
died on 9/11. Such a sculpture should focus not on the victims’ deaths but
on their lives and the productive work they did at the WTC. Police,
firemen and other rescue workers should be recognized in a separate
monument that honors their courage and determination.
In the visual arts, the only way to convey such human virtues as productivity, courage and determination is via human figures. Think of the Lincoln or Jefferson Memorials in Washington, or the Firemen’s Memorial in New York at West 100th St.
In short, what all the WTC memorial entries lack is humanity - in the most literal sense.
“Monoliths, Wells, Mounds: What Is It We're Trying to Say Here?”
Basically the same as the January 2004 op-ed above, but interesting
because it mentions some of the bizarre ideas that were put forth for the
WTC memorial in mid-2002. Published on the Ayn Rand
Institute’s website in July 2002.
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