USA: Unusual 9/11 related exhibition that puts dust of collapsed twin towers at centre-stage, opens

With the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, an unusual exhibition connected with an enduring image of the fateful day, opened on Friday (August 25) in the Big Apple. There have been several 9/11 exhibitions of photographs and video, but this one centred on a unique physical aspect -- that of the dust which emanated from the collapse of the twin towers. Garments that were cloaked with September 11, 2001 debris in the store window of a lower Manhattan store, were put together for the new exhibition titled, "Elegy in the Dust: September 11th and the Chelsea Jeans Memorial." The clothes layered with 9/11 dust had been preserved by David Cohen, the owner of the "Chelsea Jeans" store, which was located a block from the World Trade Center, as a shrine to all who were killed on September 11, 2001. Cohen wanted to keep his busy shop looking as it did on the morning of 9/11 rather than cleaning away all the physical and symbolic traces of the dust and ash. Thousands reportedly visited the store memorial. After the store closed in 2002, Cohen entrusted the New York Historical Society with preserving what he called the "Chelsea Jeans Memorial", a 50 square feet of retail space. The result was the "Elegy in the Dust" exhibition that tries to recreate the original memorial as last seen by the public. On the first day of the exhibition opening, viewers took in the dust-covered shelves of jeans, T-shirts, Ralph Lauren sweaters and tank tops bearing American flag logos. Given that the World Trade Center dust has been deemed hazardous material, the dust-smothered garments in the Chelsea Jeans installations for the exhibition have been encased in a custom-designed, sealed exhibition case that allows the public to contemplate the memorial without direct exposure to the dust. The curator of the exhibition, Amy Weinstein, who helped dismantle the storefront on October 2002, explained the motivation behind the unusual exhibition. "What we are hoping to do with the exhibition is to create a quiet place, a contemplative place where people can come, look at the memorial, remember perhaps where they were on September 11, remember a particular loved one or remember everyone who died that day, all of the victims. And we know that the dust symbolically - if nothing else, that it symbolically represents all of those lost lives," she said. Given the sensitivity of friends and family of the victims of 9/11, a question arose of how the people behind the exhibition handled the fact that some of the showcased dust might actually contain the ashes of victims of the attack. Weinstein said that the dust was handled with great care and sensitivity. "We tried to treat the dust very respectfully, very reverently," she said. "We don't know what's in it, we know there have been many analyses of the dust and ash from September 11 and we know that those analyses have shown different things at different times, depending upon when and where the dust was. So many people simply cleaned up, all the other stores near Chelsea Jeans, the store owners, the staff, swept up, they mopped, they put things in trash bags. They threw things away, what David did was try to create a memorial to all of the victims of the attack, and what we tried to do was to respect his wishes and to treat the materials carefully". The exhibition also includes an array of photographs, drawn from the Society's permanent collection, have also been displayed to assist visitors in recalling the timeline of the day's tragic events and their aftermath. "Elegy in the Dust" is part of "History responds", a series of exhibitions, interpretative programs and other initiatives related to September 11. ENDS.

ITN Source | September 2, 2006

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