Picturing 9/11: Peace, Love, and Understanding
I spent today, the 10th anniversary of 9/11, at a party—my niece’s ninth birthday party. Her birthday is 9/9, but there was a chance that she would have been born on that first sad anniversary. (I swear that my sister willed herself into labor to keep that connection from happening.) And, yet, I still make the connection each year in my mind. For me, children stand at the center of the events of September 11th and their aftermath—the children who lost fathers and mothers, the children never knowing a world without a “War on Terror,” and the children, such as my two sons, who only know 9/11 as a quasi-national holiday too unthinkable to be explained. I decided to wrap up this series on “Picturing 9/11” with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt, a collaborative work by artist Faith Ringgold and the children of New York, because that work says so much about what 9/11 is about and what the future of our remembrances should be. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Picturing 9/11: Peace, Love, and Understanding."
[Image: Faith Ringgold and young New Yorkers (ages 8-19). The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt (detail), 2006. Fabric and acrylic. Three panels, 72 x 50 in. each (approx.). Commissioned by the InterRelations Collaborative, Inc.]
[Many thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for providing me with the image above and other press materials from the exhibition The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt, which runs through January 22, 2012.]