Commemorative Exhibit

Process

My primary role on this project was to design a large 12’ tall display case in the Hall of Remembrance featuring objects left in the Lower Manhattan church following September 11th, 2001. The church had amassed a collection of thousands of objects, ranging from photos and personal effects to teddy bears, badges and strings of paper cranes, left by visitors in the wake of the terrorist attacks. This display also served to highlight materials related to the church’s role as a place of respite and organization for rescue workers and volunteers at the World Trade Center site.

A major goal of this project was to create exhibit elements that integrated with the architecture and could serve as a respectful backdrop to chapel services and programming. The challenge for this particular display was how to evoke how this site would have looked and felt following 9/11, when hundreds of remembrances piled up inside and outside of the church, without creating something that would overwhelm or distract from the present-day church functions. To achieve this the artifacts were organized by type (cookware and equipment used by volunteers, first responder patches, rosaries, etc) and then displayed en masse in a symmetrical grid. The case and mounts were all painted white to match the church’s interior, newly repainted during the restoration project. All artifacts were catalogued, measured, and photographed on site in order to develop the mounting strategy and to design multiple types of custom mounts, ranging from shelves and stands to pinboards and hanging mechanisms.