On April
19, 2000, five years to the day after the Oklahoma City bombing, I stood
in the press bleachers at the former site of the Murrah Federal Building
as President Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial to the victims.
As a journalist, I was focused and professional that muggy
Wednesday. As a human being,
I was moved. But as an
art critic, I was appalled. In my view, the Memorial failed spectacularly as public art.
Populist on the precipice of gauche, overdone in its attempt to be
all things to all visitors, it proved the old adage, “A camel is a horse
built by committee.” Today, New Yorkers facing the task of creating a World Trade
Center memorial should look to the Oklahoma City National Memorial as a
cautionary example of what the World Trade Center Memorial must not become.
Once upon a
time, public memorials were reliably direct and dignified, if perhaps a
tad boring. Washington had
his obelisk, Jefferson his rotunda, Lincoln his acropolis.
Then in 1982, Maya Lin came along with her dark elegy on the
Vietnam War and redefined our conception of what a memorial looks and
feels like. It was likely
Lin’s brand of understated overstatement, inimitable yet much imitated,
that 624 artists and architects from around the world hoped to evoke in
early 1997 when they submitted OKC memorial mock-ups to a 350-member
committee comprised of bombing survivors, victims’ family members,
rescuers, and politicians.
The
Memorial’s official homepage calls the winning proposal (by the Butzer
Design Partnership) “a multi-part design,” which is sort of like
calling a Hydra a “multi-part mythological creature.”
The Memorial is actually ten different memorials:
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2) The Field of Empty Chairs:
168 chairs, each inscribed with a victim’s name.
3) The Reflecting Pool, in which, according to the Memorial’s
Internet homepage, “visitors may see their own reflection, a face of
someone changed forever.”
4)
The Survivor Tree: an elm
that survived the blast, now touted as “a profound symbol of human
resilience.”
5) The Murrah
Building’s Remaining Walls, etched with the names of survivors.
6) The Memorial Fence:
the
original, impromptu memorial on which visitors still affix poems,
photographs, and teddy bears.
7)
The Rescuer’s Orchard, a field of fruit trees.
As a journalist, I was focused and professional that muggy
Wednesday. As a human being,
I was moved. But as an
art critic, I was appalled. In my view, the Memorial failed spectacularly as public art.
Populist on the precipice of gauche, overdone in its attempt to be
all things to all visitors, it proved the old adage, “A camel is a horse
built by committee.” Today, New Yorkers facing the task of creating a World Trade
Center memorial should look to the Oklahoma City National Memorial as a
cautionary example of what the World Trade Center Memorial must not become.
Once upon a
time, public memorials were reliably direct and dignified, if perhaps a
tad boring. Washington had
his obelisk, Jefferson his rotunda, Lincoln his acropolis.
Then in 1982, Maya Lin came along with her dark elegy on the
Vietnam War and redefined our conception of what a memorial looks and
feels like. It was likely
Lin’s brand of understated overstatement, inimitable yet much imitated,
that 624 artists and architects from around the world hoped to evoke in
early 1997 when they submitted OKC memorial mock-ups to a 350-member
committee comprised of bombing survivors, victims’ family members,
rescuers, and politicians.
The
Memorial’s official homepage calls the winning proposal (by the Butzer
Design Partnership) “a multi-part design,” which is sort of like
calling a Hydra a “multi-part mythological creature.”
The Memorial is actually ten different memorials:
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8) The Children’s Area, displaying sympathy notes and drawings
sent by schoolchildren from around the country.
9) the Memorial Visitors Center.
and 10) the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism,
whose aim, obviously unfulfilled, is “to prevent other cities from
living through what Oklahoma City had to live through.”
Any one of
these ten elements alone would have been provided the requisite pathos.
Two elements together might have complemented.
But ten of them, to use a terribly inappropriate term, is overkill.
Instead of crafting a simple yet powerful artistic statement, the
designers indulged in symbolism overdose, and the result has the sprawl
and saccharine aftertaste of a morbid theme park—Branson, Missouri meets
Timothy McVeigh. rmer site of the Murrah Federal Building
as President Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial to the victims.
As a journalist, I was focused and professional that muggy
Wednesday. As a human being,
I was moved. But as an
art critic, I was appalled. In my view, the Memorial failed spectacularly as public art.
Populist on the precipice of gauche, overdone in its attempt to be
all things to all visitors, it proved the old adage, “A camel is a horse
built by committee.” Today, New Yorkers facing the task of creating a World Trade
Center memorial should look to the Oklahoma City National Memorial as a
cautionary example of what the World Trade Center Memorial must not become.
Once upon a
time, public memorials were reliably direct and dignified, if perhaps a
tad boring. Washington had
his obelisk, Jefferson his rotunda, Lincoln his acropolis.
Then in 1982, Maya Lin came along with her dark elegy on the
Vietnam War and redefined our conception of what a memorial looks and
feels like. It was likely
Lin’s brand of understated overstatement, inimitable yet much imitated,
that 624 artists and architects from around the world hoped to evoke in
early 1997 when they submitted OKC memorial mock-ups to a 350-member
committee comprised of bombing survivors, victims’ family members,
rescuers, and politicians.
The
Memorial’s official homepage calls the winning proposal (by the Butzer
Design Partnership) “a multi-part design,” which is sort of like
calling a Hydra a “multi-part mythological creature.”
The Memorial is actually ten different memorials:
This is what
you get when you try to appease too many competing alliances of victims’
families, each with its own vision for the project.
This is what happens when you attempt to marry the inherent,
necessary, elitism of the art world with the Thomas-Kincade-and-angels
public—when you tell an artist, “I like your idea, but where do we put
the teddy bears?” This is what New York must avoid.
Yet already
the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Commission has bowed to public
complaints that the WTC Memorial project is not inclusive enough, opening
the doors to five additional architecture firms after thousands of
armchair art critics panned the initial proposals submitted by Beyer
Blinder Belle. Already,
groups such as "Voices of September 11," "World Trade Center Family
Group," and "September's Mission" are jockeying for position
as the commission revs up for an Oklahoma City-style design
competition.
How many
memorials doesrmer site of the Murrah Federal Building
as President Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial to the victims.
As a journalist, I was focused and professional that muggy
Wednesday. As a human being,
I was moved. But as an
art critic, I was appalled. In my view, the Memorial failed spectacularly as public art.
Populist on the precipice of gauche, overdone in its attempt to be
all things to all visitors, it proved the old adage, “A camel is a horse
built by committee.” Today, New Yorkers facing the task of creating a World Trade
Center memorial should look to the Oklahoma City National Memorial as a
cautionary example of what the World Trade Center Memorial must not become.
Once upon a
time, public memorials were reliably direct and dignified, if perhaps a
tad boring. Washington had
his obelisk, Jefferson his rotunda, Lincoln his acropolis.
Then in 1982, Maya Lin came along with her dark elegy on the
Vietnam War and redefined our conception of what a memorial looks and
feels like. It was likely
Lin’s brand of understated overstatement, inimitable yet much imitated,
that 624 artists and architects from around the world hoped to evoke in
early 1997 when they submitted OKC memorial mock-ups to a 350-member
committee comprised of bombing survivors, victims’ family members,
rescuers, and politicians.
The
Memorial’s official homepage calls the winning proposal (by the Butzer
Design Partnership) “a multi-part design,” which is sort of like
calling a Hydra a “multi-part mythological creature.”
The Memorial is actually ten different memorials:
the World Trade Center site need?
One. Its design
has already been submitted, built, and dismantled.
It was called the Tribute in Light, and it was the brainchild
of six designers who created a temporary homage not only to the victims,
but also to architect Mies van der Rohe's doctrine, “Less is more.”
From dusk until 11 pm each night from March 11 to April 13, the
erstwhile memorial shot twin beams of light into the heavens, immaterial
yet decidedly there, like our
memories of the Twin Towers themselves and those who perished within them.
Unlike the ten-part Oklahoma City Memorial, the Tribute in Light
expressed its power not in preponderance, but in simplicity.
If there is a lesson from the Heartland that New Yorkers should
take to heart, it is this: One
terrorist atrocity is more than enough for any city to live through; one memorial is enough to remember it by.
--Richard Speer is visual arts critic at Willamette Week,
the altermer site of the Murrah Federal Building
as President Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial to the victims.
As a journalist, I was focused and professional that muggy
Wednesday. As a human being,
I was moved. But as an
art critic, I was appalled. In my view, the Memorial failed spectacularly as public art.
Populist on the precipice of gauche, overdone in its attempt to be
all things to all visitors, it proved the old adage, “A camel is a horse
built by committee.” Today, New Yorkers facing the task of creating a World Trade
Center memorial should look to the Oklahoma City National Memorial as a
cautionary example of what the World Trade Center Memorial must not become.
Once upon a
time, public memorials were reliably direct and dignified, if perhaps a
tad boring. Washington had
his obelisk, Jefferson his rotunda, Lincoln his acropolis.
Then in 1982, Maya Lin came along with her dark elegy on the
Vietnam War and redefined our conception of what a memorial looks and
feels like. It was likely
Lin’s brand of understated overstatement, inimitable yet much imitated,
that 624 artists and architects from around the world hoped to evoke in
early 1997 when they submitted OKC memorial mock-ups to a 350-member
committee comprised of bombing survivors, victims’ family members,
rescuers, and politicians.
The
Memorial’s official homepage calls the winning proposal (by the Butzer
Design Partnership) “a multi-part design,” which is sort of like
calling a Hydra a “multi-part mythological creature.”
The Memorial is actually ten different memorials:
rnative weekly in Portland, Oregon.
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