Mourning, Still a Work in Progress
By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002

WE'RE USED to museums as places where sense is made of things, where a kind of order is imposed on the chaos of history and the act of creation (and sometimes destruction). Hung on the wall or encased in glass, the objects in museums are, in a sense, cut and dried. That's why we put them there, so we can have a certain measure of detachment as we contemplate what the larger meaning of it all is.

At the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, however, a number of thematic exhibitions have opened that intend to serve another purpose. They give shape not to something dead but to something living, albeit traumatized. Four of these -- at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American History, the Library of Congress and Norfolk's Chrysler Museum of Art -- make little effort to be analytical. They are, more properly, commemorative shows -- expressions of remembrance and shared pain. Despite 12 months of healing, the wounds of Sept. 11 are still raw for many of us. In walking through these public manifestations of grief, anger and fear, of emotion and attempts at rationality, you never know what image, icon, artifact or sound bite is going to rip the scab off and release the hurt all over again.

At the Corcoran, approximately 2,000 professional and amateur photographs (out of an archive of some 5,500) are featured in "here is new york: a democracy of photographs." Having begun as a single, anonymous photograph posted in a SoHo storefront in the days after the destruction of the World Trade Center and grown into a grass-roots, all-inclusive salon of collective mourning, the "here is new york" project now includes hundreds of photographs related to the Pentagon attack and the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa.

Identified only by number, the pictures are hung nearly from floor to ceiling, with many strung on overhead wires like laundry. Among them is the handful of photographs that we've all seen a thousand times before (No. 3025 captures a familiar crowd of dazed and debris-covered pedestrians), scads of ones we've never seen before, and then there are the ones that we never hope to see again (No. 1150 depicts a severed human leg, the flesh ripped and bloody but with a shoe still on).

The "here is new york" project is far from cut and dried. Additional submissions are being sought from anyone who has a meaningful picture. In a back room, too, a video recording booth has been set up to document the reminiscences of anyone who cares to remember -- or cannot forget. Several of these, which are playing nearby on overhead monitors, contain stories that will move you to tears in the telling, or make your flesh crawl.

The National Museum of American History's "September 11: Bearing Witness to History" contains a wide variety of material, including the now infamous squeegee handle used by window washer Jan Demczur to hack his way out of a stalled WTC elevator. Along with other objects retrieved from the wreckage (some of which resemble contemporary sculpture) and a reprise of the photographs and video sequences that we're starting to become inured to, there are some unexpected finds. A listening station at American History, for example, includes a sampling of answering machine messages left by worried people trying to reach friends and relatives in New York in the mayhem of Sept. 11. There are no dramatic revelations in any of them, other than the re-creation of ripe terror.

The Library of Congress's similarly broad "Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress" also includes photos, bits of crash debris, and a Newseum-style assortment of newspaper front pages from Sept. 11, 2001, among which is the San Francisco Examiner's succinct "Bastards!" The Library -- which in its wide, unjudgmental embrace, has also acquired a collection of some 2,500 9/11-themed artworks originally exhibited at Manhattan's Exit Art gallery in a show called "Reactions" -- has put a handful of these on display. Among them is artist Linda Hesh's cynical "Safe/Suspect," a side-by-side pairing of portraits in which a white man's face has been digitally altered to make him look Middle Eastern -- or is it the other way around? Even more disturbing is a poster from Islamabad, Pakistan, depicting a beatific Osama bin Laden above the Arabic legend "A drop of my blood will give birth to hundreds of Osamas."

In a twist on the sense of communion evidenced by the above shows, the gorgeous yet solemn cinerary urns of glassmaker William Morris at the Chrysler have a universal resonance, but deeply personal roots. Modeled after a gourd-based blood-and-milk jar of Masai origins that the artist had in his kitchen, the inspiration for Morris's funereal installation was a single glass vessel that he made to house the ashes of his mother, who died in July of last year. As the heat of that mourning was fueled by additional deaths among his circle of friends, and then the conflagration of 9/11, Morris began a series of urns, four of which have been marked with the infamous date (one for each plane).

The dramatically low-lit installation at the Chrysler, which has been fashioned to resemble a tomb, is paired with a second installation around the theme of the body and body adornment. Although unrelated, the contrast of life and death underscored by the pairing is a powerful one, and the urns, intended for the ashes of the departed, also operate as metaphorical bodies -- as ghostly, impermanent containers not only for the soul but as physical repositories for our own hard-to-handle feelings of sorrow and loss.

HERE IS NEW YORK: A DEMOCRACY OF PHOTOGRAPHS -- Through Nov. 11 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW (Metro: Farragut West). 202-639-1700. www.corcoran.org. Open 10 to 5 daily except Tuesdays; Thursdays to 9. Admission $5; $3 for seniors and guests of members; $1 for students; $8 for family groups. Free admission on Mondays and Thursdays after 5. For further information about the project, or to purchase individual prints online, visit www.hereisnewyork.org.

SEPTEMBER 11: BEARING WITNESS TO HISTORY -- Through Jan. 12 at the National Museum of American History's Behring Center, 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW (Metro: Smithsonian, Federal Triangle); 202-357-2700 (TDD: 202-357-1729). americanhistory.si.edu/september11. Open 10 to 5:30 daily. Free.

WITNESS AND RESPONSE: SEPTEMBER 11 ACQUISITIONS AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS -- Through Nov. 2 at the Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, 10 First St. SE (Metro: Capital South); 202-707-4604. www.loc.gov. Open 10 to 5 Mondays through Saturdays. Free.

WILLIAM MORRIS: TWO INSTALLATIONS -- Through Nov. 2 at the Chrysler Museum of Art, 245 W. Olney Rd., Norfolk; 757-664-6200. www.chrysler.gov. Open 10 to 9 Wednesdays; Thursdays through Saturdays 10 to 5; Sundays 1 to 5. Admission $7; students, teachers, seniors and military $5; AAA members $6; members and children ages 12 and under free; Wednesday admission is by voluntary contribution.

Free public programs associated with the Library of Congress exhibition include:

Friday, Sept. 13, at 8 -- Concert: "Suzanne Vega and Friends." Free, but tickets required. Call TicketMaster at 202-432-7328 (service charges apply); some free tickets available at the door. Coolidge Auditorium, Jefferson Building.

Wednesday, Sept. 18, from 2 to 4 -- Panel discussion: "Portraits in Grief." Mumford Room, sixth floor, Madison Building.

Sept. 24 from 2 to 4 -- Panel discussion: "The Impact of September 11 on Cultural Heritage." Mumford Room, sixth floor, Madison Building.

Oct. 1 from 2 to 4 -- Panel discussion. Architectural Record Editor Robert Ivy moderates a panel on architectural proposals for the World Trade Center site. Coolidge Auditorium, Jefferson Building.