Exhibiting 9/11: Interpreting and Memory at the World Trade Center Site by Ian Kerrigan

Ian Kerrigan is Assistant Director orking for the 9/11 Memorial lead exhibit designer Thinc Design of Development currently under with media designer Local Projects, at the National September construction and not yet historical exhibition designer Layman 11 Memorial and Museum. W open to the general public, I often field Design, and Museum staff—to reveal a He may be contacted at inquiries regarding the location of the palimpsest of interpretation of what was [email protected]. Museum. When I respond that the physically here, what remains, and what Museum is being built at the World Trade was lost. Arrays of dynamic media will If you would like to comment Center site in , typical follow further allow visitors to insert their own on this article or others in this up questions include: Isn’t that site being memories into the for issue, please log on to the NAME dedicated as a memorial?; How can you future audiences to encounter, at once listserv at http://groups.yahoo. build a museum at ?; or How engaging in tribute and historical com/group/NAME-AAM/. do you create an exhibition on 9/11 so storytelling themselves. soon after the event at that place? To build the 9/11 Memorial Museum at any 9/11 Memorial and Museum other place than the authentic site of the Opening for the 10th anniversary on terrorist attacks sounds nonsensical to me, September 11, 2011, the 9/11 Memorial but then I remember that not all national is a tree-filled plaza covering eight of memorial in the U.S. are located the original 16 acres of the World Trade on the actual site of a tragedy. The United Center site. The design consists of two States Holocaust Memorial Museum in pools, each nearly an acre in size, set Washington, D.C. is situated thousands within the original footprints of the Twin of miles from where the atrocities took Towers. The 2,977 names of those killed place in Europe. The Oklahoma City in the 9/11 attacks in New York, at the National Memorial & Museum locates Pentagon, and on Flight 93—as well as the outdoor symbolic memorial on the site the six victims of the 1993 World Trade of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building Center bombing—are inscribed into where the bomb detonated, while the bronze panels surrounding the pools. Being located Museum is located in an adjacent building Thirty-foot waterfalls cascade down at the World that sustained collateral damage. Distance the sides of both pools, as the water from the authentic site, or separation disappears into deeper voids in the pools’ Trade Center site of an onsite memorial from an offsite centers. The 9/11 Memorial Museum will or near-site museum is a condition open one year later in 2012. Occupying was a founding for several memorial museums in this 110,000 square feet of exhibition space, principle for the country. the Museum preserves the archaeological character of the World Trade Center site, 9/11 Memorial Being located at the World Trade Center and will feature extensive exhibition areas Museum. site was a founding principle for the 9/11 near the original bedrock foundation of Memorial Museum. An archaeological the Twin Towers, seven stories below the framework of recovered artifacts, Memorial plaza. excavation, and the ability for museum visitors to encounter the cavity in which Memorial Museum as the World Trade Center used to stand, Archaeological Site allows the exhibition development Perceiving the World Trade Center site team—architects Aedas and Snøhetta, as an archaeological site has been a 20

EXHIBITIONIST FALL '11 fundamental strategy in developing the exhibitions at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. The World Trade Center complex was dominated by its iconic Twin Towers, soaring over a quarter- mile into the sky, occupying over 10 Entrance pavilion and memorial pools at the 9/11 Memorial, set to open on September 11, 2011 for the tenth million square feet of rentable office, anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Rendering by Squared Design Lab. retail and restaurant space, and serving as a major transit hub for lower . The towers’ collapse on Artifact Repatriation 9/11 created a pile of 1.8 million tons of Repatriated to the site and installed in the material that had to be safely excavated Museum’s public spaces are artifacts such and removed, and carefully searched as large pieces of recovered steel from and sifted for any human remains and the Twin Towers, a segment of the North Perceiving the identifiable personal or building property. Tower broadcast antenna, an elevator World Trade A process lasting nine months, the motor that carried passengers up and cleanup operations left at its conclusion down the 110 stories of the Twin Towers, Center site as an an empty pit with several architectural and a fire engine destroyed in the collapse archaeological features remaining in situ, and a host of of the towers belonging to a company recovered objects that could one day be of firefighters who lost 11 members site has been a displayed as museum artifacts. on 9/11. These objects are literally the remains of the day. Removed from the fundamental The Museum includes a historical World Trade Center site during cleanup strategy in exhibition that explores the events that operations and installed in the Museum’s took place on 9/11, its antecedents public spaces, they are transformed developing the including the 1993 bombing at the into artifacts attesting to the scale of exhibitions at the World Trade Center, and its aftermath devastation and loss. The exhibition leading up to present day. The public team envisioned the presentation of these 9/11 Memorial spaces between the historical exhibition exhibits as a modern-day passage leading Museum. and other enclosed galleries are areas in to an archaeological site such as the which the exhibition development team Roman Forum, in which fallen capitals has interpreted archaeological remnants and broken lintels are replaced with steel and repatriated large-scale objects to give building parts and emergency response visitors an overall sense of the events that vehicles, as ruins and testaments to the occurred at this site. In many ways, the events they had once witnessed. museum journey is conceived of as a giant archaeological walking tour. Our goal in placing exhibition material Walking tours have long figured out in these public spaces was twofold: create the power of place, bringing visitors to additional content opportunities that distinct spots where historical events directly connect visitors to this particular unfolded and declaring this happened site, and provide a rich experience for here. This approach has valuable visitors who may not enter the core exhibition potential. historical exhibition. We recognize that for some visitors, re-encountering

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EXHIBITIONIST FALL '11 recovery workers sheared these columns to the buildings’ foundation level. Some 9/11 family members collaborated with landmark to advocate for keeping these historic remnants as part of the redeveloped World Trade Center site. To ensure these in situ historic assets are meaningfully accessible, our team decided not only to interpret the truncated columns, but also to install an exhibition on the construction of the World Trade Center and the “life of the towers.” Visitors get an exhibition that describes the archaeological remnants in front of them, but also contextualizes them in a larger story about the World Trade Center, its inception, and life here in . A review conducted in accordance with Section 106 of the National Act of 1966 also identified other historic resources to be protected and made available to the public in the Museum. Visitors begin their archaeological journey in the Museum’s entrance pavilion atrium with two recovered over 80-foot sections of “tridents,” original steel columns that formed the bases of Museum as Artifact the Twin Towers. Rendering by Squared Design Lab. But by and large, the Museum’s primary artifact is the site in and of itself. We (continued from page 21) the events of the day in an historical allow visitors to walk around it above exhibition narrative may be overwhelming ground on the Memorial plaza, move and emotionally exhausting, and some through it as they make their descent may be motivated to come to the Museum to the exhibition galleries at bedrock, wholly to bear witness to the site and and observe its remaining architectural appreciate what was once here and what features and recovered relics on display. But by and large, was lost. The name of the above ground Memorial the Museum’s design is Reflecting Absence, emphasizing Excavation and Preservation the absence of those who were killed on primary artifact As visitors travel to the northern and 9/11 in the visible absence of the vertical is the site in southern perimeters of the museum towers, and through the voids of the space at bedrock, excavations of the memorial pools set within the footprints and of itself. Twin Towers’ structural columns remain of where they once stood. This theme exposed, revealing a series of box columns is transformed by the archaeology of set within a concrete base atop a covered the public spaces of the Museum below bedrock layer of Manhattan schist. ground, where this absence becomes During cleanup operations following 9/11, a curated exhibition experience. Here,

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EXHIBITIONIST FALL '11 Large artifacts, including a segment of the antenna from the North Tower of the World Trade Center, lie in repose in the public spaces of the Museum. Rendering by Thinc Design with Local Projects. visitors engage with the objects and stories media sources provide rich resources for that fill the hollow space that remained the exhibitions, which allow those who after the towers’ collapse and cleanup, witnessed the events first hand to share underscoring the monumental scale of their stories and documentation, at once Many of the the World Trade Center and the loss of reinforcing the message that these events dynamic media nearly 3,000 people who were killed in happened here, as well as allowing first the attacks. person accounts to carry the narrative pieces are being in lieu of a traditional museum voice, developed Media as Portals to Memory whenever possible. Exhibitions labels The physical archaeology of the site will follow suit, employing excerpted to allow presented in the exhibition spaces quotations from archival sources and oral Museum staff is aided by an array of archival and history accounts to provide additional dynamic media presentations that allow insight and context to objects. to incorporate visitors to dig into their own personal memory trenches. Occurring at the cusp Creating an exhibition only a decade visitor recordings of the digital age, 9/11 was the most after 9/11 means that most visitors will directly into the documented breaking news story up to come with their own memories of these that date (Friend, 2006a). Television events. It is estimated that one third of the media, so that and radio stations broadcast imagery world’s population witnessed the events of future audiences of the unfolding attacks and aftermath. 9/11 on television, internet, circulated still Professional and amateur photographers images, or radio over the course of that will be hearing and videographers captured photos and day (Friend, 2006b). The Museum honors the voices of past footage from all angles. Phone calls, these memories that visitors carry with voicemails, and aviation and emergency them at the very onset of the introductory visitors. responder transmissions were recorded exhibition experience, which brings and later transcribed. These archival visitors from the lobby down to bedrock

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EXHIBITIONIST FALL '11 Excavated structural columns at the southern perimeter of the Museum, surrounded by an exhibition on the construction of the World Trade Center. Rendering by Thinc Design with Local Projects.

At the start of the exhibition experience, visitors pass through a soundscape of past visitor voices from around the world remembering where they were on 9/11. Rendering by Thinc Design with Local Projects.

(continued from page 23) level. Visitors pass through a soundscape Conclusion of voices from around the world, Memorial museums possess the dual References: remembering where they were on 9/11 responsibility of historical education and Friend, David. (2006a). Watching and how they first heard about the commemoration. For the 9/11 Memorial the world change: The stories attacks. Museum, this translates to the mission of behind the images of 9/11. New bearing witness to the events of September York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. These and other dynamic media pieces 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993, and have been stitched together using oral Friend, David. (2006b). The honoring the memories of those who man in the window. Vanity Fair, histories, and recorded remembrances of were killed. Yet the task of creating an September 2006. victims. When the Museum opens, visitors exhibition on the theme of 9/11 that will be able to share their own memories provides both historical narrative and of 9/11, remembrances of victims, and gestures of tribute proves challenging in thoughts about the continuing legacy of a time when the event occurred only a these events in onsite recording booths. decade ago: the aftermath and legacy of Many of the dynamic media pieces are 9/11 is ongoing, and public and personal being developed to allow Museum staff emotions surrounding the event are still to incorporate visitor recordings directly evolving. Locating the gallery spaces into the media, so that future audiences below the Memorial at the bedrock will be hearing the voices of past visitors. foundations of the original Twin Towers The visitor thus has the opportunity to of the World Trade Center allowed our engage in a reflective tribute activity, exhibition development team to tell this while simultaneously becoming part of story here at this time. Harnessing the the telling of 9/11 history. In this way, power of place, the exhibitions will enable the exhibitions become about collective visitors to encounter and connect with history, highlighting the notion that the the authentic site of tragedy, honor the Museum is made up of donations from archaeology of the space, commemorate people who experienced these events. those who were lost in the attacks, and contribute their own memories to the creation of history.

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