Reflections On The 9/11 Memorial and Museum and How It Has Handled the Covid-19 Pandemic

For my final journalism project, I got a part-time job at the 9/11 Museum and Memorial to interview survivors, follow the lives of curators, investigate the museum artifacts, and of course, fulfill my final paper. I found myself beyond impressed by how the 9/11 Memorial and Museum painted a beautiful narrative of how 9/11 bonded the community of Americans and enlightened those who were not alive to witness the attacks. The museum helps reshape the memorial as a living wound for the events on September 11th, 2001 and the museum serves as a foundation for people, such as myself, to educate themselves on the events. At the same time, it makes me think about how we will, in the future, memorialize other events, like the Covid pandemic in New York.

I began this journey of figuring out how the museum shapes a person’s understanding of 9/11 in late January of 2020. I had the privilege of meeting Ms. Patricia Katz, a current docent at the museum, who dedicates her life to educating individuals at the museum. She kindly purchased a ticket for me to visit the museum along with herself and gave me a personal tour. Ms. Katz was also kind enough to support my research throughout the museum and has helped me figure out my connection to the attacks on 9/11. I also received a volunteer internship with her colleague, Ms. Dana Donati, which allowed me to give back to the museum as well as further research the museum.

One of the highlights of my expedition was the art that compliments the artifacts in the museum and truly incorporates the memorial side to the museum. Upon entering the museum, you are welcomed by a beautiful installation by artist Spencer Finch. He was the only artist to commission a piece for the museum because of his creative nature to twist a visual of that day in New York into something admirable. He replicated the color of the skies above the twin towers using a colorimeter. He asked each survivor about their experience looking at the sky and matched a shade of blue to represent it. Therefore, when one looks at the piece they see 2,983 blue watercolor swatches; one to represent each victim. 

I had the opportunity to speak to a member of his gallery, who chose to remain anonymous, who told me about the process of making “Trying To Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning.” He told me about how it is comprised of individual sheets of Fabriano Italian paper that were hand-painted. He claimed, “at first Finch tried to push all the squares together to have one giant poster but it really didn’t resemble the trauma of the event. I remember Finch wanted to replicate that and so he hung each square like a missing person notice.”

I appreciated how symbolic it is to anyone viewing it because so many people see it differently. I spoke to one lady who was photographing the installation and she told me that it reminded her of “pantone colors” and “people’s emotions on that September morning.” Jane Cunnings, another woman looking at the photograph, described the blue as the feeling of early fall. “I was just so amazed at how well the artist captured it. This was my favorite time of year; speaking to my friends at house dinners, my children starting school, and just getting back into the bustle of [New York] city after the summer” claimed Cunnings. Embedded in the installation is a quote from Virgil’s Aeneid which states, “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” Finch responded, “As an artist, I don’t feel like my motives are always pure, but I feel that they’re pretty pure here. I’m a New Yorker, and I was here that day,” Finch told the New York Times.A panoramic picture of the installation with the quote. In addition to the art of the museum, I have enjoyed attending the many webinars and events that the museum holds. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum holds a weekly public program called “We Were There” in which two survivors share their stories and give viewers a first-hand account of the history of the attacks. The first guest speaker was Mike Fabiano and he described his experience transporting his disabled colleague John Abruzzo down from the 69th floor of the World Trade Center. Mr. Fabiano escorted Mr. Abruzzo using an EVAC+CHAIR, a sled-like wheelchair designed for stairs, part of a security update post the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. He distinctly remembers the tornado effect the planes had on the building causing him to jolt atop his desk. He claims that this first thought was Mr. Abruzzo and went to check on him a few offices down the corridor. Upon arrival, he found a few other employees ready to lift Mr. Abruzzo onto the EVAC+CHAIR and carry him down to the lobby from the 69th floor. Mr. Fabiano refused to abandon Mr. Abruzzo even when given the opportunity by firefighters at the spot. Mr. Fabiano proudly claimed, “John and I still reminisce over that day and I am so thankful to have saved our lives.” This chair was featured in the museum and has many dents and ash atop due to the destruction. “It is an object that reminded us of the particular vulnerability of limited mobility-occupants within high-rise structures,” Chief Curator Jan S. Ramirez said. It was a privilege to have been in the presence of a survivor and to hear them share their powerful stories to serve as a reference and more importantly an insight.    Mr. Abruzzo and his rescue chair.  Exhibits, stories and artifacts can never do the diligence of retelling the events, however, that does not take away from the beauty of the museum. My time researching and visiting the museum has been truly unforgettable and I am forever thankful to Ms. Patricia Katz, Ms. Dana Donati and Mr. Montera for making this opportunity possible for me. Unfortunately, I was not able to continue my research and job at the museum as the pandemic began. Museums and memorials were understandably not the focus of the reopening stages of the pandemic and this has truly impacted the 9/11 Museum and Memorial. According to Alberto Equis, a security manager at the site, “This was the time commemorating 9/11 where I could not visit the museum, invite guests to see the exhibits or visit my Dad’s photo on the wall.” Not only have the docents, tour guides, gift shop workers, and security guards been unemployed, but they could not fundraise for the museum and survivors through events, tourism, and 5K runs. A group of current docents meets every day at the entrance of the museum to have a socially distanced lunch to resemble their lunch breaks when they worked at the museum. I spoke to a woman named Kara and she said that they were not able to do 9/11 justice this year with the museums being closed. People were burnt out from a year of zoom calls, so not many people tuned into the webinars, and metal fencing blocked off the memorial to visitors. The museum was able to coordinate survivors and the families of the victims to visit the memorial on 9/11 this past year, but the annual Day of Service around New York City was not possible this year. Hopefully, soon the museum will be up and running again for visitors and a public program will be created to fully commemorate 9/11 this year. One New Yorker observed: “The 9/11 Museum raises our consciousness about loss and civic life. And it does that through a concentration of images at a very specific location on a specific day. Our grief as a city was channeled there; our sense of history, as New Yorkers, was routed there as well. How will the victims of the COVID pandemic be remembered, memorialized, rendered into stone, steel and glass? We think of this because the candle images at the Lincoln Memorial around the time of the Biden-Harris inauguration was the first national recognition and visual rendering of loss at a moment when American politics was changing. How will that narrative be constructed and how many lenses will contribute to our understanding? The losses from Covid took place across the entire city—-nation—-world. Would Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, once the face of the early casualties and heroic medical efforts, house a memorial? Or would the memorials be more decentralized and dispersed? One for Brooklyn? One for Manhattan? One for Staten Island? One for The Bronx? The 9/11 Museum moves us to imagine such things.”