World Trade Center Memorial:  Lessons from Oklahoma City
commentary by Richard Speer
copyright 2002

 

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:

1) The Gates of Time:  two bronze gates, the east inscribed “9:01 am,” the west “9:03 am,” the minutes before and after the bomb went off.

World Trade Center Memorial:  Lessons from Oklahoma City -- Commentary by Richard Speer


World Trade Center Memorial:  Lessons from Oklahoma City
commentary by Richard Speer
copyright 2002

 

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:

"> 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:

s="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"> 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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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: