Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Citizens Union

You're on an older version of the site, please click here to view the current site

Rebuilding NYC - brought to you by Gotham Gazette
Gotham Gazette Gotham Gazette

Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Citizens Union

You're on an older version of the site, please click here to view the current site

Rebuilding NYC





Focus on 9/11 In Art And Culture

•  Books
•  Film Documentaries
•  Museum Exhibitions
•  Songs
•  Television
•  Theater
•  Visual and Performance Art


Current News
All News



9/11 In Arts And Culture
The Anniversary
Rebuild Downtown
The Memorial
Governance
Impact on New Yorkers
Economic Rebuilding
Security
Charities
Ground Zero









All Culture News

With a Collage of 9/11 Audio Clips, Artists Create a Ground Zero Walking Tour CD - Sep 11, 2004
From the hundreds of calls and audio clips they collected, the Kitchen Sisters created "The Sonic Memorial Project," created from hundreds of phone calls and audio clips related to 9/11, has been turned into an audio walking tour of the Trade Center site: "Ground Zero: A Sonic Memorial Soundwalk." (New York Times )

Marking 9/11's Anniversary on City Island - Sep 11, 2004
New York has its ends of the earth, odd little places so psychically removed from the rest of the city that they barely heed the urban scat. Places like City Island, that Bronx curio of a community lingering like an afterthought in the chop and sway of the Long Island Sound. But it is the second week in September, the third anniversary, and remote City Island is still New York City. (New York Times )

Football Star to Sing At 9/11 Anniversary Ceremony - Sep 10, 2004
A former football star, Morris Robinson will provide the soundtrack for Friday's ceremony at ground zero marking the third anniversary of 9/11. (New York Times )

Image of Twin Towers Remains Throughout City - Sep 9, 2004
They are lost, of course. But they have not disappeared. Three years after it seemed that the name and image of the twin towers would be mournfully expunged from the cityscape, the World Trade Center survives. Not on the skyline, but on street signs and shopping bags and book covers, in Fire Department insignia and the logo of the Alliance for Downtown New York, in a subway station and a parking garage, at the gateway to SoHo and in the lobby of an apartment building that was especially hard hit on Sept. 11, 2001. (New York Times )

Frederic Schwartz: Designer of Two 9/11 Memorials - Sep 9, 2004
Frederic Schwartz is standing on a peninsula at Liberty State Park where ground is to be broken tomorrow for the 9/11 memorial he has designed for New Jersey, only three-and-a-half hours after ground is broken in Westchester County for the 9/11 memorial he has designed there. But for a moment, his sad eyes are not focused on the empty sky across the Hudson River where the World Trade Center is supposed to be. (New York Times )

Art Exhibit Traces Children's Recovery from 9/11 - Sep 9, 2004
The magic marker drawing of an empty baseball diamond adorned with two little yellow crosses told Allison Hobbs just how much her 12-year-old son, Steven, misses his dad, who was killed on 9/11. (New York Daily News)

Photographing Ground Zero, Minute by Minute - Sep 8, 2004
In the fall of 2001 when the dust and ash from the World Trade Center were still in the air, Jim Whitaker, a documentary filmmaker, decided to photograph everything happening at ground zero. By the spring of 2002 three cameras were pointed at the pit, each taking one shot every five minutes, round the clock. Months later, three more cameras were added. That was the beginning of Project Rebirth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a historical record of the rebuilding. (New York Times )

Children of 9/11 Victims Display Art in Chelsea - Sep 8, 2004
Fifty pieces of art now on display in Chelsea were created by children who lost a parent during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Forty children contributed pieces for the exhibit at the Terrapin Art Gallery. (NY1)

Ground Zero Documentary Details "Sad Compromise" - Sep 7, 2004
If you're looking for a fly-on-the-wall view of one of the nastiest architectural catfights in recent memory, be sure to watch Tuesday's "Frontline," which charts the tumultuous first year in the rebuilding effort at ground zero. There are less shameful reasons to tune in too. (Chicago Tribune)

One Tribute to 9/11 Victims Has Never Been Seen by Public - Aug 30, 2004
One of the most moving tributes to the victims of Sept. 11 has never been seen in public — a 30-foot flag emblazoned with images of the victims. (New York Post )

In Texas, Bits of Ground Zero - Aug 15, 2004
They were riveted by the remnants from ground zero, and they could see them from just inches away without having to leave Cleburne, Tex. The people were at an exhibition in Cleburne, population 28,000, about 30 miles south of Fort Worth. It was the latest stop for the New York State Museum's traveling exhibition about the effort to recover human remains and personal objects from the rubble of the World Trade Center after the debris was brought to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. (New York Times)

Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Favors Corporate Interests, Says Report - Aug 12, 2004
A budget watchdog group said yesterday that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had favored corporate interests and had approved millions of dollars in contracts with organizations connected to the corporation board. (New York Times)

Will WTC Cultural Center Be Built on Greenwich and Fulton, or Somewhere Else? - Aug 12, 2004
"RISK-TAKING." That is a quality that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation says it will seek in choosing architects for the cultural buildings at the new World Trade Center. The question is whether any architect will risk a prospective commission by challenging the current planning orthodoxy which requires that the museum complex be located within the memorial precinct. (New York Times )

9/11 Tree to be Cast in Bronze - Aug 12, 2004
A sycamore tree shielded St. Paul's Church from falling debris from the World Trade Center collapse on September 11, 2001. Now, the tree’s root system is being made into a sculpture that will rest on the church grounds. (NY1)

Libeskind Will Be Among Architects Competing to Design Cultural Buildings - Aug 7, 2004
aniel Libeskind, who devised the master plan for the World Trade Center site but has not yet fully designed a building there, will be among the architects competing to design one or both of the cultural complexes planned for the redevelopment. In issuing a request for proposals this week, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation painted the fullest picture to date of what visitors might find when the two complexes are completed in 2009. (New York Times)

WTC Cultural Institutions Tell Residents What to Expect - Aug 7, 2004
Representatives from the four cultural institutions selected for the arts and museum complex at the redeveloped World Trade Center site told residents what kinds of amenities they could expect when the complex opens in five years. (Downtown Express)

Motorcycle Riders Hit the Road in Memory of 9/11 Victims - Jul 24, 2004
Hundreds of bikers hit the streets for the annual Independence Motorcycle Ride commemorating the victims of 9/11. The ride was conceived three years ago by construction workers who served during the 10-month cleanup of Ground Zero. (NY1)

Tribute in Light Gets Funding for Next Five Years - Jul 9, 2004
Intended originally as an ephemeral memorial, the twin-beam "Tribute in Light," which simultaneously marks the presence and absence of the World Trade Center, has been guaranteed a place in the night sky every Sept. 11 for at least the next five years. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation board voted yesterday to give $3.5 million to the Municipal Art Society, which helps produce the memorial. (New York Times)

The Fishing Fanatic Behind the Freedom Center - Jul 6, 2004
Once Tom Bernstein latches onto something, be it a combative fish, a maligned development scheme for four neglected city piers, or a controversial proposal for a world-class museum devoted to world freedom at ground zero, he doesn't let go. (New York Times)

Skyscraper Museum Opens Twin Towers Exhibit - Jul 5, 2004
As the city marked Independence Day with the groundbreaking of the new Freedom Tower, the Skyscraper Museum opened its exhibit on the buildings it will replace — the Twin Towers. (New York Post)

What is the Freedom Center? - Jun 24, 2004
people behind the Freedom Center, one of the cultural institutions chosen this month to occupy ground zero, have spent much of their time so far insisting on what the nascent museum is not. What is less clear is what the institution will be. (New York Times)

Lincoln Center Weighed Heavily in WTC Arts Selections - Jun 15, 2004
When it came time early this month for a final decision on the cultural presence at the World Trade Center site, city and state officials' focus was in large part on what would be best for a cultural site some five miles to the north — at Lincoln Center. (New York Times)

Janitor Tells of Encounter With 9/11 Hijacker - Jun 15, 2004
A hero janitor who helped victims escape from the World Trade Center's north tower before it collapsed told the 9/11 panel that he came across one of the hijackers in the building a few months before the attack. (New York Daily News)

Chosen Arts Groups Lay Out Plans for Ground Zero - Jun 12, 2004
Four arts groups -- The Joyce dance theater, The Drawing Center, Signature Theater, and the new Freedom Center -- laid out their plans for their new downtown locations last week, after being picked by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to move to Ground Zero. (Downtown Express)

Cultural Institutions Picked for World Trade Center Complex - Jun 11, 2004
Pledging to reinvigorate cultural life in Lower Manhattan, state and city officials yesterday announced the selection of arts groups devoted to dance, theater and drawing, along with a museum celebrating freedom, as the cultural anchors for the World Trade Center site. (New York Times)

In Arts Complex Competition, Underdogs Come out on Top - Jun 11, 2004
Failing to tap a big-name cultural institution for Ground Zero, redevelopment officials announced yesterday that four less well-known organizations were selected yesterday to occupy future new buildings at the site. (New York Post)

Cultural Institutions for Ground Zero To Be ChosenThis Week - Jun 6, 2004
Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Pataki plan to announce this week which cultural institutions will be included at the World Trade Center site, a major breakthrough following months of contentious debate, the Daily News has learned. (New York Daily News)

Sound Booth at Memorial Center Will Preserve 9/11 Memories - Jun 5, 2004
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s board on Wednesday approved a $500,000 payment to StoryCorps and September’s Mission to set up an oral history booth at the World Trade Center site by the three-year anniversary of the attack. The interviews will become part of the archives of the interpretive center that will be located under the W.T.C. memorial, said Anita Contini, vice president of memorial and cultural affairs for the L.M.D.C. The Library of Congress will also keep the records. (Downtown Express)

Some Firefighters Leaving Their Wives for 9/11 Widows - May 27, 2004
If 9/11 was the earthquake, the families of firefighters are still, nearly three years later, trying to ride out the aftershocks, the painful, unforeseeable shufflings and reconfigurations that follow any death, much less hundreds within a single professional community. Unlikely though her story seems, Susan Zazulka is not the only wife of a firefighter whose husband left her for a 9/11 widow. There is also Mary Koenig, who lives in upstate New York, whose husband left her for a Staten Island widow named Madeline Bergin. And there is Christina Garger, a teacher on Long Island whose husband, Richard Garger, started seeing a 9/11 widow. One widow who wouldn't use her name said that she briefly dated a firefighter until she found out that he was still officially married. Fire Department sources say there are 10 or 11 such love triangles. (New York Times)

Worry Grows That Cultural Plans for Ground Zero Are Off-Track - May 26, 2004
With needed fund-raisers backing away and decision making stalled on the cultural component of a redeveloped World Trade Center site, a growing chorus of critics are questioning the effectiveness of the process and whether the project has gone off track. Lost in the debate over whether an opera house can fill its off-season or whether a dance and theater space could together attract sufficient funds, some arts leaders and planning experts say, is the more fundamental question of whether either of these options lives up to the grand plans for Lower Manhattan's hallowed ground. (New York Times)

History of 9/11 in Cultural Events - May 18, 2004
May 28, New York City will be obliterated onscreen for the first time since September 11. Trailers for Roland Emmerich’s $100 million–plus environmental-disaster flick, The Day After Tomorrow, are already hyping the carnage: “What you see is happening now,” a news announcer warns, as locals panic, and waves of water crash through city streets. “Lower Manhattan is virtually inaccessible!” Emmerich’s film has nothing to do with terrorism—the apocalyptic gimmick here is global warming—but its marketing nod to September 11 is unmistakable. A time line of cultural responses to terror in the post-9/11 era: (New York Magazine)

Over 33,000 Sign Up For 9/11 Health Registry - May 2, 2004
The World Trade Center Health Registry has now enrolled more than 33,000 people who may have inhaled harmful debris following the collapse of the twin towers. Health officials want even more to sign up, and they are making a special appeal for parents of children who attended school below Canal Street to register. Residents below Canal Street, rescue and recovery workers and anyone who was south of Chambers Street on September 11, 2001, are also encouraged to sign up. (NY1)

St. Paul's Chapel To Open Lasting Exhibit Dedicated to 9/11 - May 1, 2004
Just as it comforted rescue workers after Sept. 11, 2001, St. Paul’s Chapel now brings solace to those who want to remember and commemorate the terror attack that happened in its backyard. On May 3, the chapel will unveil “Unwavering Spirit: Hope and Healing at Ground Zero,” an exhibit of artifacts that highlight the rescue and recovery efforts. (Downtown Express)

New Documentary Film Looks at NY Firefighters Post 9/11 - Apr 29, 2004
Thomas Burke has been a firefighter for 25 years. He's just one of the firefighters featured in "Brotherhood," an up-close and very personal look at New York's Bravest as the department rebuilds after 9/11. (NY1)

Advisory Committee For Cultural Complex Selected - Apr 9, 2004
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation yesterday introduced a 24-member Memorial Center Advisory Committee to assist it in developing a cultural complex at the World Trade Center site. (New York Post)

In Storage, 9/11 Artifacts Vulnerable To Elements - Apr 3, 2004
Water, daylight, gravity and salt air have taken their toll as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey - improvising a curatorial mission no one could have imagined - has transformed an abandoned Tower Air hangar, five miles from the Atlantic Ocean, into a storehouse, conservation workshop, temporary museum and shrine. (New York Times)

Artist Who Worked With Ground Zero Dust Honored - Mar 29, 2004
A New York-based artist became the first winner of a new British art prize on Sunday for a work made from dust collected from the streets of Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. (Associated Press)

Artists Struggling After 9/11, Survey Finds - Mar 15, 2004
They are, to a large extent, the same worries that have always been voiced by New York City artists: the rents are too high, the pay is too low, and if things don't get better soon, I'm going to have to go. But according to a new survey released last week, those problems have only grown in the two and a half years since the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. (New York Times)

Brooklyn Unveils 9/11 Memorial - Mar 9, 2004
It'll be a tribute in light and a warning in bronze. The winning design for Brooklyn's official Sept. 11 memorial, unveiled yesterday, is a 25-foot-tall pillar that was inspired by the trumpets blown by turn-of-the-century firefighters as they rushed to burning buildings. A spotlight on top will shine every night from 9 to 11 p.m. (New York Post)

Brooklyn's 9/11 Memorial To Be Unveiled Today - Mar 8, 2004
The winning design for Brooklyn's official Sept. 11 memorial will do more than honor the hundreds of residents who died on that awful day - it will provide a spiritual connection to one of America's greatest triumphs. Artist Robert Ressler's winning design will be forged at the same Greenpoint foundry that produced the famous statue in Arlington, Va., of six Marines planting the American flag at Iwo Jima. Ressler's design will be unveiled this morning at the 69th Street Pier in Bay Ridge, where it will be installed this summer. The group backing the memorial still must raise $35,000 to maintain it. Checks can be sent to: Brooklyn Remembers, 9201 4th Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11209. (New York Post)

Long A Dream, Skyscraper Museum Will Become A Reality - Mar 3, 2004
For most people skyscrapers are just part of the visual furniture that makes New York New York. For Carol Willis, they are infinitely more: "the most important contribution of American culture to the history of architecture," she says. It seemed obvious to her that there ought to be a museum about them. And on April 2, due to efforts, there will be. (New York Times)

Museum Displays Painting Of Children Who Lost Loved Ones On 9/11 - Feb 24, 2004
Two-and-a-half-year-old Andrew Cappers yesterday showed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg where his hand, dipped in paint and pressed against a small piece of canvas, had left its mark in memory of his father, James C. Cappers. Andrew's handprint appears in one of scores of canvas panels now on display at the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West, in an exhibit of work by children who lost their parents in the Sept. 11 attack and in the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. (New York Times)

Firefighter's Paintings Recall 9/11 - Feb 1, 2004
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, four Easton firefighters, including Robert Halley, spent several days at ground zero assisting in the cleanup. After seeing the destruction at the site and the many images in the media, Halley set about painting his interpretations of what he saw and how he felt. (Allentown Morning Call)

Arab Culture Near Ground Zero - Jan 31, 2004
In the wake of 9/11, and especially in Downtown Manhattan, Alwan for the Arts is trying to highlight the diversity of Arab culture, showing New Yorkers that it is more than just the destructive force we witnessed two years ago. It can also be extraordinarily creative. (Downtown Express)

In One Family, Ugly Court Battle Over How 9/11 Money Is Spent - Jan 29, 2004
As the sole heir of deceased World Trade Center firefighter William Lake, 9-year-old Kyler Lake received a small fortune in charity funds and death benefits. How that money is being spent is at the heart of a vitriolic court battle, the longest-running and most hotly contested Sept. 11 case in Kings County Surrogate's Court. (Newsday)

Poet Criticizes Memorial, In Verse - Jan 27, 2004
Opinions about the plans for a World Trade Center memorial are easy to find. Precious few qualify as poetry, though. Eugene Schlanger's thoughts carry no more weight than anyone else's. But their lyricism is unmistakable, agree with them or not. (New York Times)

9/11 Relics Rust in Hangar - Dec 19, 2003
There are no planes behind the mammoth locked doors of Hangar 17 at Kennedy International Airport. Instead, it hides history. This is where a 100-foot-tall by 100-foot-wide section of the lower facade of the north tower — the infamous Gothic arches — is kept, disassembled into 25 pieces weighing 80,000 pounds apiece. Laid out on the floor are the crumpled remains of the north tower antenna. Parked in one corner is an assortment of crushed fire trucks. Here rests the last column removed from ground zero, complete with the graffiti from firefighters and ironworkers who recovered victims and cleaned the site. (New York Times)

9/11 Rugs Not Big Sellers on New York Streets - Dec 15, 2003
With an appraiser's scrutiny, Ed Cutting, a New York City firefighter, stared at a fine Afghan rug painstakingly hand woven in a style centuries old. Its handiwork depicted an epic scene. He stood Saturday in a weekend flea market at Avenue A and 11th Street in the East Village, at a booth displaying rugs. Several of the rugs, in a style usually reserved for depicting landscapes or abstract tribal patterns, showed a crudely rendered interpretation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. (New York Times)

Man Convicted of Crime Avoids Jail Because of Service on 9/11 - Dec 11, 2003
At ground zero, David Margules was a celebrated figure. He took thousands of photographs of the firefighters at work and captured a famous image of crossed beams, which he called "Crucifix." One of his pictures, he says, is in the White House. But Mr. Margules had a festering problem that dated from before the terror attacks. Yesterday, his two worlds collided in Federal District Court in Brooklyn whenhe came before Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis for sentencing for securities fraud. (New York Times)

Libeskind Won With Smear Campaign, Says A Member of His Team - Dec 9, 2003
Architect Daniel Libeskind launched a political-style name-calling campaign against a rival design team to undermine its chances of being chosen as Ground Zero master planner, according to one of Libeskind's partners. In a lecture at SUNY Buffalo on Oct. 8, urban planner Gary Hack described the competition for the job - which Libeskind eventually won - as "the architectural equivalent of nuclear war." (New York Post)

Assemblyman Doesn't Want Liberty Bonds Used for Queens Power Plant - Dec 7, 2003
A Queens assemblyman is threatening legal action to stop the backers of a proposed power plant from using New York Liberty Bonds to fund the troubled project. "This is a continuing pattern of preferential treatment over more worthy projects," said Assemblyman Mike Gianaris, a Democrat from Astoria, who's weighing a lawsuit to block the bond issue. (New York Post)

Scorsese to Make Statue of Liberty Film as Fundraiser - Dec 3, 2003
Martin Scorsese came to Battery Park last week to announce he would produce and narrate a documentary about the Statue of Liberty to help raise $5 million in order to reopen the statue, which has been closed to the public since 9/11. (Downtown Express)

Some Firefighters Have Left Spouses for 9/11 Widows - Dec 1, 2003
At least a dozen of New York's Bravest - some of them assigned to look after Sept. 11 widows - have left their wives for the spouses of their comrades killed in the terror attacks, sources told The Post. (New York Post)

Return to Ground Zero: An Emotional Commute - Nov 25, 2003
Yesterday, on a morning that proved at once painful and uplifting, downtown workers streamed into the heart of the former World Trade Center site for its first rush hour since the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. (New York Times)

Young Designers Dominate Memorial Competition - Nov 25, 2003
The unveiling last week of eight competing designs for a World Trade Center memorial has provoked an inevitable debate about whether any of the projects can properly honor those who died on Sept. 11, 2001. But nearly everyone has been struck by how many of these projects, plucked as they were from a pool of more than 5,000 anonymous submissions, are the work of young artists and not the architectural elite. (New York Times)

Exhibit of World Trade Relics Opens at Historial Society - Nov 25, 2003
Three old friends gathered in the days before Thanksgiving amid a roomful of scattered artifacts, once-mundane objects that have been transformed by trauma. These are relics of the World Trade Center attack; they will be displayed in a new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society that opens today. (New York Times)

There is Enough Insurance Money for Freedom Tower, says Port Authority Chairman - Nov 14, 2003
Port Authority chairman Joseph Seymour said yesterday that even with the raging court battle, there are already enough insurance proceeds to build Gov. George Pataki's proposed 2.5-million-square-foot Freedom Tower. Whether there is enough money to build everything else on a long list of lower Manhattan projects as well as planned regional transportation projects is another question. (Newsday)

Libeskind Planning to Time Release of Memoir to 9/11/04 - Oct 20, 2003
World Trade Center master planner Daniel Libeskind wants to time the release of his memoir to the third anniversary of the 9/11 terror attack - and in a proposal circulated to editors suggests tying the book's promotion to other Ground Zero events. (New York Post)

Libeskind Writing a Memoir - Oct 14, 2003
World Trade Center master planner Daniel Libeskind is shopping a book proposal for his memoirs - and he promises to donate a portion of the proceeds to the children of 9/11 victims. The proposal, under the working title "Foundations of Optimism," began landing on editors' desks last week. Libeskind, 57, has already started writing the book, his agent, Scott Mendel, said. (New York Post)

Ground Zero Arts Proposals Are Complete - Sep 25, 2003
A total of 112 cultural groups submitted ideas for ground zero by last week's deadline, officials of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation said yesterday. The groups, including the American Museum of Natural History, the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater and the New York Hall of Science, were responding to an invitation from the corporation, which is overseeing redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. (New York Times)

WTC Relic Sold On Web - Sep 23, 2003
A memorial sculpture made of steel from the wreckage of the World Trade Center has been sold on the Internet, infuriating relatives of 9/11 victims and the artist who created the poignant tribute. It wasn't immediately clear how one of the sculptures - distributed exclusively to victims' families - got into the hands of the company that hawked it on eBay. (New York Daily News)

9/11 Brought Changes for New York Historical Society - Sep 9, 2003
At the New-York Historical Society, it sometimes seems like the history of New York started Sept. 11, 2001. The venerable museum has mounted a dozen exhibits on the World Trade Center disaster and has a full slate of free programs to mark Thursday's second anniversary. (New York Daily News)

Flags Draped Around Liberty Island - Sep 8, 2003
Hundreds of specially designed flags were draped around Liberty Island yesterday in an emotional tribute to the victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. More than 600 volunteers unfurled the flags, which were created by Chinese performance artist Pop Zhao. (New York Post)

New Video: A Rare View of 9/11, Overlooked - Sep 7, 2003
An unseen video tape of September 11, a kind of accidentally haunting artifact, has surfaced publicly only now, on the eve of the second anniversary of the attacks, after following the most tortuous and improbable of paths, from an insular circle of Czech-American working-class friends and drinking buddies. (New York Times)

TV Reviews: September 11, Before and After - Sep 5, 2003
"There is absolutely no self-consciousness whatsoever to 'DC 9/11: Time of Crisis.' This made-for-television movie on Showtime Sunday night is less a first draft of history than a final rewrite of a Tom Clancy screenplay," writes the Times. "PBS, which is marking the second anniversary of Sept. 11 on Monday night with 'The Center of the World,' a very thorough two-part documentary on the rise - and fall - of the World Trade Center, has the opposite problem. Two years after the twin towers collapsed, it is a little late to be reliving - especially at such a slow, stately pace - the saga of the Rockefellers and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey." (New York Times)

92nd St. Y Considers a Ground Zero Site - Aug 27, 2003
The 92nd Street Y, whose concerts, camps, classes and health club have made it a mainstay of the Upper East Side, is developing detailed plans for a possible downtown branch at ground zero. The Y is talking with several other organizations, including the New York City Opera, the Joyce Theater, the Tribeca Film Festival and Hunter College about sharing space in the performing arts center designated for the World Trade Center site or in other locations nearby. (New York Times)

Networks Holding To Schedule On 9/11 - Aug 12, 2003
Two years removed from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, broadcast networks will mark the anniversary with news stories but aren't planning to interrupt their regular schedules. It's in marked contrast to last year, when the broadcasters devoted much of their day to the anniversary either with news specials or, in NBC's case, a commemorative concert. (Associated Press)

Cut in Space at Ground Zero May Bar Home for City Opera - Jul 31, 2003
The floor space available for a performing arts center for ground zero has been reduced by about 20 percent, say officials involved in drawing up the plans, making it harder to build an opera house there. It was this reduction of the available floor space, or footprint, to between 35,000 and 37,000 square feet from some 45,000 square feet in the original Daniel Libeskind plan that led the corporation in charge of the rebuilding effort last week to say there is no room for an opera house at the World Trade Center site. Officials of the New York City Opera, which wants to leave Lincoln Center for downtown, were troubled by the comments; the opera has been talked about as the lead contender for the site's cultural anchor. (New York Times)

Art Groups Want in on Ground Zero Center - Jul 27, 2003
More than 75 cultural institutions, ranging from established city museums to newcomers like the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, want to be part of the arts center being planned for the new World Trade Center site. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is not asking for formal proposals yet, but it invited responses from groups around the world to see what types of institutions are interested, said LMDC spokeswoman Joanna Rose. (Associated Press)

Arts Groups Hurry Proposals for Ground Zero Cultural Center - Jul 22, 2003
More than 10 well-known New York arts and cultural institutions are working on plans to be part of the new center that will be built at Ground Zero. The proposals, from institutions ranging from off-Broadway theaters to museums, are in response to the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.&squot;s recent request for formal expressions of interest from cultural groups that wish to be part of the site. (Crain's New York Business)

Relatives Say Plans Infringe on Twin Towers' Footprints - Jul 9, 2003
Several structures now being built within the excavated World Trade Center site encroach on the footprints of the former twin towers, a development that has drawn the ire of a group of relatives of people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. Many victims' relatives view those areas as sacred representations of where their loved ones died and want it free from any new development — a position that has been embraced, at least in part, by Gov. George E. Pataki and other rebuilding officials. (New York Times)

Graffitied WTC Panels Removed - Jul 3, 2003
Panels detailing the history of the World Trade Center site, defaced by graffiti, were removed from the fence surrounding Ground Zero Friday. Replacement panels should be in place before Labor Day, in a higher position on the fence than before, according to Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman. (Newsday)

Trade center beam begins journey to North Carolina - Jul 3, 2003
Firefighters dedicated a 3,000-pound beam from the World Trade Center on Thursday and sent it by convoy to Camp Lejeune, N.C., where it will become the centerpiece of a Sept. 11 memorial in a July Fourth ceremony. (Newsday)

Graffiti WTC Memorial Site - Jul 2, 2003
Underneath the names listed on memorial plaques at the World Trade Center site, visitors can view six information panels featuring illustrations and descriptions of the towers _ now covered with graffiti. (Newsday)

Plans Pour In for Memorial at 9/11 Site - Jul 1, 2003
For months the talk about the World Trade Center site has concerned office space, building designs, street grids, transit hubs and financing, but yesterday attention turned to what many people first thought of immediately after Sept. 11 — a memorial to the dead. (New York Times)

9/11 Injury Claims Go Federal - Jun 23, 2003
A Manhattan federal court judge has ruled that plaintiffs claiming they were injured during recovery efforts at the World Trade Center site between Sept. 11 and Sept. 29, 2001, should have their cases handled in federal court. The judge also ruled that those injured during cleanup efforts at other sites after that date should bring their cases in state court. (Newsday)

WTC Children To Create Art Work - May 20, 2003
Children of World Trade Center victims will create artworks that will be stitched together and displayed at schools and museums around the country, officials announced Monday. The "Art for Heart" program was the brainchild of Ali Millard, the 16-year-old stepdaughter of Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive director Neil Levin, who died at the trade center. (Associated Press)

A Sign May Cast a Somber Shadow Over a Memorial - May 18, 2003
According to artist Patrick Clark, a new pharmacy under construction at Beach Channel Drive and Beach 116th Street in Rockaway Park would hold a rooftop sign so large and brightly lighted that it would dominate and cheapen a 9/11 memorial that Clark is designing for a small city park across the street. (New York Times)

Birth of Central Park Holds Parallels With Ground Zero - May 15, 2003
There are many eerie parallels between the effort to build Central Parkand the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. Today the museum is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the park it has inhabited since 1880 with the opening of "Central Park: A Sesquicentennial Celebration." The exhibition traces the design and building of the first great public park in America. The show features the original presentation plans and drawings by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, who won an 1858 design contest that was curiously echoed in the ground zero competition decided last February. (New York Times)

Ground Zero Artist Says He Didn't Mean To Offend - May 14, 2003
An artist who painted a fake "CAUTION Low Flying Planes" sign on a building near ground zero said Tuesday that he did not mean to offend anyone. But the painting, which includes an image of a flickering flame, has angered neighbors and provoked complaints to the city Landmarks Preservation Commission. (Associated Press)

Critics Call 9/11 Mural Distasteful - May 13, 2003
Painting on side of building at 17 Leonard St., not far from Trade Center site. The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission was flooded with complaints yesterday about what critics called a distasteful mural near Ground Zero. The 10-foot-high, 14-foot-wide yellow mural with the words "CAUTION Low Flying Planes" alongside shooting black flames was painted by Manhattan artist James Peterson on the side of a loft building at 17 Leonard St. It was unveiled yesterday. (New York Daily News)

'After': Surviving Sept. 11 - Apr 20, 2003
Steven Brill's ''After'' is a book of great ambition. It sets out to describe America's reaction to the terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001, an event so overpowering that given a year and a half of reflection and relentless commentary it can still seem utterly amorphous. How to define the American reaction to this horror story? One way is to examine the active response of some of the people whose roles in business and government require them to engage the attack without overinterpretation. Brill chooses about 20, mainly responsible officials, insurance lawyers, developers and politicians, but also a few ordinary folks whose lives came to be defined by 9/11 and its aftermath. (New York Times)

Remnants of Twin Towers Reborn as Monuments Across the U.S. - Apr 3, 2003
Nineteen months after the attacks on the World Trade Center, Americans have found comfort in the mangled carcass of the twin towers. Steel remnants, bearing the wounds of the tragedy, have become cultural touchstones. Girders carefully stacked like Lincoln Logs have become the centerpieces of municipal gardens. Church bell towers display an incongruous mix of battered metal and smooth stone. Civic reflecting pools shimmer with wavy images of cold, hard steel. (Los Angeles Times)

New World Trade Center Design is Being Eclipsed by its Architect, For Now - Mar 30, 2003
World Trade Center site designer Daniel Libeskind has fast become a pop culture icon. In six months, the man who will help bring life back to the destroyed trade center site has become a hot ticket in a town obsessed with celebrity. And he may contribute to an uptick in applications at his alma mater, Cooper Union, too. (Newsday)

Author Charges Silverstein Was Plotting To Cash In On Attacks Within Hours of 9/11 - Mar 25, 2003
Within hours of the collapse of the twin towers, leaseholder Larry Silverstein was plotting a strategy to nullify parts of his insurance policy and maximize his payout, a new book claims. Steven Brill's "After - How America Confronted the Sept. 12 Era" also contends that Silverstein has been daring the Port Authority to breach its lease with him so he can make "a fast $1 billion." (New York Daily News)

New Report Challenges Account of Looting at Ground Zero - Mar 23, 2003
A new 50-page analysis challenges the account of an award-winning journalist that some firefighters stole pairs of jeans from a store at the World Trade Center while responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. In his report, based on satellite data, aerial photographs, maps and footnotes, author George Black seeks to refute the assertions of William Langewiesche, who reported the looting last year in a series of articles for The Atlantic Monthly. The articles were later turned into a critically acclaimed book, "American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center," that angered many firefighters. (Associated Press)

'Flag Man' No Longer Allowed Into Ground Zero - Mar 11, 2003
For more than a year, Richard Wright of Glen Oaks has been setting flags to fly throughout Ground Zero and later retrieving them to donate to police and fire departments, Boy Scout troops and construction workers. Yesterday, Wright, 50, retrieved much of the last batch of his flags from the Port Authority, which recently told him he could no longer continue to set them at the site. (Newsday)

Victims' Families Say 9/11 Images in Rudy Movie Are 'Exploitative' - Mar 5, 2003
Already bombarded by images of the twin towers' destruction, families of Sept. 11 victims assailed an unauthorized TV movie about former mayor Rudy Giuliani that's packed with graphic Ground Zero footage. "It's exploitative," Jack Lynch, whose son Firefighter Michael Lynch was killed in the attacks, said yesterday. "It's a horrible thing to do to the families. It's crass and insensitive." (New York Daily News)

Rockaway Artist's Tribute Will Honor Victims of World Trade Center Attack - Feb 17, 2003
Drawing on a variety of materials and themes, 40 artists submitted entries for a memorial to the 70 residents of the Rockaways, including many firefighters, who lost their lives at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Though entries were submitted from as far away as Greece, the winning design came from a local artist. "The Heavens Over the Rockaways" was designed by stained-glass artist Patrick Clark of Rockaway Park. (Newsday)

Interviewers In 9/11 Oral History Project Were Changed By Experience - Feb 14, 2003
About a year ago, 30 interviewers armed with tape-recorders and resolute curiosity fanned out across New York City, seeking true-life stories of 9/11. The 449 accounts they came back with, on more than 400 hours of tape, captured the horror, and sometimes, the spiritual transcendence of those days. But something else happened, too. The interviewers, working for Columbia University's 9/11 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project, became entangled themselves in the stories they'd heard. (New York Times)

Polish Immigrant Gives Life Savings to NYC After 9/11 - Feb 14, 2003
A field in Chinatown's Columbus Park will be renovated thanks to a Polish immigrant who donated his entire life savings to New York City - even though he lived more than 1,000 miles away. Joseph Temeczko, who came to America through Ellis Island and once worked at the Statue of Liberty, bequeathed $1.4 million to New York. Temeczko told his lawyer to amend his will just one week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He died the following month after suffering a heart attack in the backyard of his Minnesota home. (New York Daily News)

Firefighter Thanks Sigourney Weaver - Jan 28, 2003
Actress Sigourney Weaver was nearly brought to tears yesterday at the state Capitol when the head of a firefighters union gave her an emotional thank you for her new Sept. 11-related movie. In "The Guys," Weaver plays a journalist called upon to help a fire captain write a series of eulogies for the men he lost at the World Trade Center. (New York Post)

Son of Russian Avant Garde Architect Creates Plan for Ground Zero - Jan 26, 2003
Mark Khidekel, the son of Russian avant garde architect Lazar Khidekel, has revived and refined his father's ideas in a design for the unlikeliest of places: Ground Zero. Khidekel proposes the structure as a replacement for the World Trade Center. He calls it the Vertical Highway. (New York Times)

A Profile of Ground Zero Architect Rafael Viñoly - Jan 22, 2003
Architect Rafael Viñoly, a leader of the "Think Team" that contributed a fabulist, Eiffel Tower-inspired confection to the World Trade Center design competition, says that his take on what should happen at ground zero is informed by what he says happened to him decades ago in his native Argentina, first when a 1966 coup resulted in raids, and murders, at his university, and later when the military, no friend to intellectuals, raided his home. (New York Times)

WTC Steel To Be Used in Navy Warship - Dec 26, 2002
Steel salvaged from the wreckage of the World Trade Center will be used to build the Navy's USS New York, a warship named in honor of those who perished in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. (New York Post)

Firefigher's 9/11 Story Doubted - Nov 26, 2002
Battalion Chief Richard Picciotto, who wrote the best-selling book "Last Man Down," about surviving the collapse of the World Trade Center's north tower is being ripped by firefighters for allegedly exaggerating his role in the Sept. 11 rescue efforts. (New York Daily News)

Bookstore Cancels 9/11 Author's Reading - Nov 23, 2002
The Harvard Square bookstore WordsWorth abruptly canceled a scheduled reading Thursday night by William Langewiesche, author of ''American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center,'' after angry firefighters announced they'd picket the event. It was the store's first such cancellation, prompted by security concerns. An angry storm has swirled about Langewiesche since the book was published last month. Besides other criticisms of firefighters at Ground Zero, the book suggests that some might have engaged in looting before the twin towers collapsed Sept. 11. (Boston Globe)

9/11 Storefront Memorial Moved to New York Historical Society - Oct 29, 2002
A time capsule from Sept. 11, 2001, the last memorial to stand as testimony to what was left when the smoke lifted at the World Trade Center, was removed yesterday by a team of experts in respirators and hazardous-materials suits. The Chelsea Jeans memorial, a glassed-in collection of dust-covered, flag-bearing Ralph Lauren sweaters and Levi's jeans, was painstakingly dismantled, and workers began moving it to the New-York Historical Society. (New York Times)

Intrepid Museum Gives Memorial for 9/11 Hero Dog - Oct 28, 2002
The golden retriever whose World Trade Center heroics earned him a citation in The Guinness Book of Records was honored at a memorial service yesterday at the Intrepid Museum. (New York Post)

New York Times Book Review: 'American Ground' - Oct 20, 2002
William Langewiesche's book "American Ground" is a "slim but powerful account of the dismantling of the wreckage of the World Trade Center," writes Jeffrey Goldberg in the New York Times today. The book's strengths are its use of the "truth, unclouded by sentiment," and "capacity to surprise: it is a work of original reporting, and its pages are filled with astonishing observations." (New York Times)

Debate Over Atlantic Monthly Author's Ground Zero Account - Oct 16, 2002
On Tuesday, Oct. 15, North Point Press, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, shipped out copies of American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center, by journalist William Langewiesche, an account of the cleanup at Ground Zero by the only reporter granted unrestricted access to the site. But just in time to complicate the publication of this otherwise highly praised book, an unlikely protester named Rhonda Roland Shearer has appeared. Ms. Shearer, a 48-year-old artist and the widow of the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, is on a personal crusade to debunk Langewiesche’s reportage, derail his Pulitzer hopes, and see the book recalled and destroyed. (New York Observer)

After 9/11, New York Is America's De Facto Capital - Oct 6, 2002
While New York has long been the nation's center of culture, finance, fashion and media, the city in the aftermath of Sept. 11 cohered into something more than the sum of its perennially celebrated parts. After its highest towers were taken down, New York rose from its initial shock to illustrate in real time what America actually is, a huge and resilient democracy animated by citizens of every conceivable stripe, pursuit and ethic. (New York Times)

Port Authority Gives Pope a WTC Memento - Oct 1, 2002
Port Authority cops presented Pope John Paul with a cross yesterday made out of metal and other debris from the rubble of Ground Zero. The cross was presented to John Paul during his weekly public audience by a delegation of the Port Authority Police. (New York Daily News)

Killed on 9/11, Fire Chaplain Becomes Larger Than Life - Sep 27, 2002
The Rev. Mychal F. Judge, the sandal-shod fire chaplain with friends across New York, died at the World Trade Center 54 weeks ago, and has since become the center of a fervent following. But while some admirers of Judge are promoting him for canonization, his story is not as simple as the glorification of a good man who died bravely. (New York Times)

Sunflower 9/11 Tribute - Sep 26, 2002
Artist Xavier Roux chose sunflowers as his medium for a tribute to the World Trade Center because they grow fast, and to towering heights. In early summer, Roux planted 4,000 of them, from ground zero to Chelsea, in the shape of the twin towers. The flowers outline two huge rectangles roughly four times the size of the original towers. Only a few sunflowers survived -- about 150, he estimates. (New York Times)

Queens Art Center Removes Controversial 9/11 Art - Sep 25, 2002
A Queens art center has removed a controversial window display that depicted people falling from the World Trade Center. Eleven white silhouettes had been placed on the three floors of the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning on Sept. 10 - and met with immediate criticism. (New York Daily News)

N.Y.U., Fearful of Publicity, Cancels Class on Ground Zero - Sep 22, 2002
New York University course that was to have focused on the intersection of politics, finance, design and culture in the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan has been canceled because of concerns about the potential political fallout from the course. (New York Times)

Marble Tributes to 9/11 Have No Permanent Home - Sep 22, 2002
Highland, New Jersey's Memoria Project, as it is called, has become a powerful evocation of the 9/11 tragedy. It draws local families in mourning and tourists from far away who have heard about the mammoth white columns with their haunting figures of a man and a woman half-encased in stone. But while it has become an instant icon here, the Memoria Project is essentially homeless. (New York Times)

After Complaints, Rockefeller Center Drapes Sept. 11 Statue - Sep 19, 2002
A bronze statue in Rockefeller Center, meant to commemorate those who jumped or fell to their deaths from the World Trade Center, was abruptly draped in cloth and surrounded by a curtain wall yesterday. The statue, Eric Fischl's "Tumbling Woman," depicts a naked woman with her arms and legs flailing above her head, as if in a backward somersault. It had drawn some complaints since it went on view in the complex's lower concourse about a week ago. (Associated Press)

9/11 Brought Hardship for Artists - Sep 19, 2002
A recent survey by a downtown arts group found that over 80 percent of New York City artists are making less from their work after 9/11, and that 10 percent are facing eviction. (Downtown Express)

Theatrical Tributes on Anniversary - Sep 12, 2002
On Sept. 13, 2001, Broadway united in a show of resilience by taking to the stage in the aftermath of catastrophe. Yesterday, the theatrical community found many ways to mark the anniversary. Candles were lit at 6:30 in the evening during a vigil in Duffy Square. Marquees all around were dimmed 90 minutes later. (New York Daily News)

Echoes of 9/11 at Film Festival - Sep 12, 2002
Day six of this year's Toronto International Film Festival was set aside to observe the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States. Two films that seem to encompass the full range of emotion toward those attacks and their lingering aftermath were given gala screenings by the festival. (Newsday)

Firefighter Statue Gets Permanent Home - Sep 10, 2002
The 6-foot-tall bronze statue of a kneeling firefighter, which had sat on a truck bed in the street outside the Milford Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, has found a permanent home just a few feet away. It has been moved from Eighth Avenue near 44th Street to the sidewalk as a permanent memorial to firefighters and members of law enforcement agencies who died on Sept. 11. (New York Times)

New York City Police Museum Hosts Powerful Exhibit On 9/11 - Sep 9, 2002
Of the hundreds of Sept. 11 commemorations across the country this week, few are as powerful as the collection now on display at the New York City Police Museum. To enter the four-story building downtown is to step into the day of the attacks. The items on display at the exhibit, entitled "Stronger Than Ever: The NYPD Responds to 9/11," were culled from hundreds of artifacts from Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, where Trade Center debris was taken. Others were loaned or donated by police officers, families of the slain and the public. (New York Daily News)

Hollywood's Response to 9/11 - Sep 9, 2002
As part of the Los Angeles' Times' "9/11 A Year After" coverage, the paper takes a look at 9/11's influence on Hollywood, and finds that the prediction that "nothing would be as it was before" appears to be only partly true. (Los Angeles Times)

September 11 As Seen By 11 Foreign Directors - Sep 9, 2002
"11'09"01 — Sept. 11," is an unusual movie, both touching and disturbing, which comprises 11 short films made by 11 international directors, each lasting 11 minutes 9 seconds, plus one final image. (New York Times)

Play About Fallen Firefighters Now a Movie - Sep 9, 2002
When it first opened last December "The Guys," said to be the first play about Sept. 11 to reach the New York stage, was widely expected to last a season, no more. Now the script of the play is out in paperback, and "The Guys" will have its premiere as a movie on Wednesday -- Sept. 11 -- at the Toronto Film Festival. (New York Times)

9/11 Documentary "Anatomy of September 11th" Stands Out - Sep 9, 2002
An installment of A & E's "Investigative Reports" series seeks to explain why the World Trade Center towers, such massive steel buildings, fell. (New York Times)

New York Times Book Review: Reading 9/11 - Sep 8, 2002
The New York Times Book Review's anniversary coverage includes a September 11 reading list and a critical essay by Walter Kirn about the themes and merits of the mountains of 9/11 books that appeared after the attacks "like flowers after a funeral." (New York Times)

Bloomberg Asks Networks Not To Run Constant Images of 9/11 Collapse - Sep 7, 2002
Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn't want to see reruns of the searing images of Sept. 11, he declared yesterday on his WABC Radio show, asking the television networks not to run the images of the towers' collapse again and again. (New York Post)

At 125 Cedar St: A Tea Set that Captured the Moment of 9/11 - Sep 6, 2002
Elaine Williamson's tea set, encased in a fine, gray dust, was photographed by Edward Keating and published last Sept. 20 on the front of the The New York Times' daily section "A Nation Challenged." Several newspapers around the world also published it and the photograph became an icon of 9/11. When Williamson first returned to her apartment, she took the tea set with her. (New York Times)

9/11 Poem to Be Read Before Congress - Sep 6, 2002
Billy Collins, poet laureate of the United States, will read this poem about Sept. 11, "The Names" before Congress today at its joint session in New York City. (New York Times)

Films Make Art of 9/11 Chaos - Sep 6, 2002
You can't speak strictly cinematically about the attack on the Twin Towers; it was an extraordinary disaster, one whose emotional and spiritual dust hasn't even begun to settle. Nor can one judge the plethora of anniversary films and videos now coming out by standard critical criteria. (Newsday)

Sculptor Forced to Move 9 / 11 Statues - Sep 6, 2002
An artist who spent the summer creating a memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was forced to move two 13-foot statues from a federal park where they were created. (Associated Press)

Tattoos Serve As Personal Memorials - Sep 6, 2002
Like those long favored by military veterans, Sept. 11 tattoos have become a public declaration of loss, defiance and survival. Firefighters, police officers and bereaved relatives all sought solace though memorials inked into their skin. (Associated Press)

9/11 Television: A Special Day of Pain and Comfort - Sep 6, 2002
The 9/11 anniversary programming, which has already begun, will steadily increase until Wednesday. There is not much new within this onslaught. But just as television was the medium through which most of us experienced the attacks, now television is setting the memorial tone as it offers — or rather demands with its blanket coverage — a day of reflection. (New York Times)

Theatrical Odyssey Memorializes 9/11 - Sep 5, 2002
"Brave New World," a three-day theater marathon commemorating the attacks of Sept. 11, was the brainchild of playwright J. Dakota Powell, who had lost a relative in the collapse of the World Trade Center. The show runs Monday through Wednesday at Manhattan's Town Hall and benefits the New York Children's Foundation. (Newsday)

Cartoonist Draws on 9/11 for Strip - Sep 5, 2002
Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Maus" cartoonist-novelist, is creating an autobiographical comic-strip serial for the Forward, the national Jewish newspaper, chronicling his reaction to 9/11. (Newsday)

Tangible Reminders of Sept. 11 Get Pride of Place in Exhibitions - Sep 5, 2002
Dozens of cultural institutions plan to display hundreds of objects recovered after the terror attacks of Sept. 11. They will exhibit a flower-bedecked mountain bike believed to have been abandoned by a missing World Trade Center messenger, a crushed firefighter's helmet from ground zero, the bent squeegee handle used to escape from a North Tower elevator, and many other historical objects. (New York Times)

Voices of the 9/11 Generation - Sep 5, 2002
In June, Newsday invited students to send in artwork, essays or poems about September 11. Hundreds of youngsters sent in work that conveyed their sadness, confusion, horror - and, happily, their indomitable optimism and resolve - in the aftermath of last year's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. A sampling of the students' work. (Newsday)

Tribute in Wax - Sep 4, 2002
]The three firefighters photographed raising the American flag over the ashes of Ground Zero, an image that became the symbol of America's will to fight terror, were honored yesterday at the unveiling of a life-size wax monument of the moment. (New York Post)

With 9/11 Flag, A Mystery Unfurls - Sep 4, 2002
There it was, one of the enduring symbols of Sept. 11: a simple American flag that became an icon when it was raised by three firefighters over the ruins of the World Trade Center.But where is it now? In the months after the terrorist attack, the flag traveled a very patriotic route around the world. When it was returned to its owners a few weeks ago, they noticed that it was not the same flag. (New York Times)

Face of Firefighting, Taken One at a Time - Sep 3, 2002
Laura Yanes, an amateur photographer, walked by a firehouse near Union Square in July 2001 and simply snapped a picture of a firefighter. Her project grew after September 11, and Yanes now plans to photograph every single New York City firefighter. So far, less than a year into the project, she has photographed 2,000. (New York Times)

PBS Draws Ire Over 9/11 Show - Sep 3, 2002
The city’s largest public television station is marking September 11 with a documentary whose Web site is being lambasted by Israelis and American Jewish groups for offering an inaccurate and one-sided history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. (New York Sun)

Sept. 11 Urban Legends Abound - Sep 3, 2002
As the anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, terror-related urban legends are running rampant. Luckily, Snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is working to keep pandemonium at bay with levelheaded debunking of these well-meaning but often goofy warnings and too-good-to-be-true stories. (Salon)

Sept. 11 Books Hit Bookstores - Sep 3, 2002
A year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, bookstores across the country will mark the anniversary with readings, vigils and other events. They will also be selling books. More than 100 related works are due this fall and virtually all booksellers have tables set aside. (Associated Press)

Film Captures City in 9/11's Wake - Sep 1, 2002
When he saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center, film director Steven Rosenbaum did what he does best: He told his colleagues to pick up their cameras. Rosenbaum's film "7 Days in September," which opens Friday in two local theaters, is the first documentary released theatrically that captures the events of 9/11 and the following week. It's a story told through the eyes of 27 different filmmakers. (New York Post)

Artists' Reflections on Creativity Since the Day of Destruction - Sep 1, 2002
The cultural landscape today may not seem terribly different from what it was a year ago. But some artists with Manhattan roots and habits, whose daily views were dominated by the World Trade Center towers, have found that the air they breathe in is not the same, and neither is the imaginative product they exhale. (Newsday)

Artist Publishes 9/11 Graphic Novel - Aug 30, 2002
One year after the twin towers came crashing down, French illustrator Sandrine Revell, who was visiting New York on September 11, distilled the cataclysmic events into her own language: the graphic novel. The finished product -- a slim, 48-page hardcover book -- appeared Thursday in stores throughout France. (Associated Press)

9/11 Statue at U.S. Open - Aug 27, 2002
A bronze statue of a firefighter kneeling, air tanks on his back, one hand on his forehead, the other on his helmet, which rests on the ground, has found a temporary home at the U.S. Tennis Center, where it will remain for the next two weeks during the U.S. Open. (Newsday)

9/11 Television: A Special Day of Pain and Comfort - Jan 1, 2002
The 9/11 anniversary programming, which has already begun, will steadily increase until Wednesday. There is not much new within this onslaught. But just as television was the medium through which most of us experienced the attacks, now television is setting the memorial tone as it offers — or rather demands with its blanket coverage — a day of reflection. (New York Times)

Covering the Terror, Again - Aug 25, 2002
Media coverage of the September 11 one-year anniversary will dwarf that of previous remembrances for the Oklahoma City bombing, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Newsday)

Theater Artists Commemorate 9/11 - Aug 21, 2002
One year after the terrorist attacks, nearly 150 theater artists will commemorate Sept. 11 with "Brave New World: American Theatre Responds to 9/11." The star-studded theater marathon, consisting of about 50 short plays and songs responding to the tragedy, will run Sept. 9 through Sept. 11 at the midtown performance venue Town Hall. (Newsday)

More Than 150 Sept. 11 Books to Hit Shelves - Aug 19, 2002
Ranging from glossy photography books to terrorism primers, more than 150 books about Sept. 11 and every issue surrounding it are flooding bookstores for the one-year anniversary. The publishers themselves admit there are too many books, and say they expect only mediocre sales. But bookstores, buoyed by strong sales from the earlier Sept. 11 books, are ordering nearly every book out there, even if only one or two copies. (Crain's New York Business)

A TV Rush, at Times Crass, Over Sept. 11 - Aug 19, 2002
With the first anniversary of the national trauma little more than three weeks away, news organizations are gearing up. Newspapers and news magazines are planning special sections or series. But it is broadcast journalists, whose medium demands immediacy, who may be feeling most competitive for access to the people they believe can help recapture the collective memory of last year's horror. (New York Times)

Smithsonian Struggles With 9/11 - Aug 13, 2002
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's cell phone and baseball cap, a stairwell sign from the World Trade Center, a piece of limestone from the Pentagon, a uniform from a Navy officer who rescued a Pentagon victim. Those are some of the items that will be on display when the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History opens its exhibit, "September 11: Bearing Witness to History," on the anniversary of the attacks. (Associated Press)

Broadway Shows To Be Closed September 11 - Aug 6, 2002
Many Broadway theaters will go dark on Wednesday, Sept. 11, the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Traditionally, theaters offer matinee and evening performances on Wednesdays. The following shows have announced there will be no performances that day: "Aida," "Beauty and the Beast," "Chicago," "42nd Street," "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," "The Graduate," "Into the Woods," "Les Miserables," "The Lion King," "Mamma Mia!," "Noises Off," "Oklahoma!," "Rent" and "Urinetown." (Newsday)

Advance Broadway Sales Have Plummeted - Aug 5, 2002
Since Sept. 11, Broadway producers say, advance sales for some of the top shows have plummeted, and the downturn could have a serious effect on the city's live theater.A recent survey by the League of American Theaters and Producers found that 37 percent of theatergoers were buying tickets at least a month in advance, down from 50 percent. (New York Post)

Museums Exhibit Artifacts of WTC - Aug 1, 2002
Physical reminders of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, such as pieces of an airliner fuselage, half a phone handset and computer disks melted into a glob, now have a second life as bits of history. They go on display Thursday at the New York State Museum in Albany, one of the handful of institutions gingerly beginning to exhibit artifacts from ground zero (Associated Press)

Exhibits Re-examine WTC Tragedy - Jul 24, 2002
Four artists and a group of students throughout the city are using art to preserve the innocence stripped away on Sept. 11 and the emotions thereafter. The New-York Historical Society on Tuesday unveiled four new exhibits related to the World Trade Center. (Newsday)

Historic Art Also A Casualty of Sept. 11 - Jul 12, 2002
Lost in the Sept. 11 terror attacks were innumerous valuable artistic, cultural and historic items worth tens of millions of dollars. But the real significance is that the material, including Helen Keller's letters, sculpture by Auguste Rodin and artifacts from the African Burial Ground, can never be replaced. (New York Daily News)

Artists' 9/11 Reflections On Display - Jul 9, 2002
An exhibition of works by American artists seeking to use art to express their feelings about Sept. 11 opens today at the National Arts Club. "True Colors: Meditations on the American Spirit" includes more than 60 paintings, drawings, photographs and even a cartoon. (New York Daily News)

Downtown Arts Groups In Danger Of Folding - Jun 25, 2002
Small and midsize arts institutions around the World Trade Center site are struggling and in danger of folding if they don't get more disaster funding, a City Hall report charged yesterday. Most of the cultural groups have relied on aid from private charities because government funding was cut dramatically after Sept. 11. Donations have not been enough to make up for money lost, the report says. (New York Daily News)

Artists Aim to Energize Downtown NYC - May 29, 2002
What was once an indoor mall at the World Financial Center will become artist studios under a program designed to draw tenants and visitors back to the battered complex. This fall, the nine artists moving into the space will exhibit works ranging from a computer-rendered history of downtown development to handcrafted artificial trees. (Associated Press)

Rodin Sculpture That Survived September 11 Now Missing - May 20, 2002
An authentic cast of the sculpture "The Thinker" by Auguste Rodin that was housed in the World Trade Center survived the Sept. 11 attacks, but now has vanished. It, and other pieces of artwork by Rodin, were being exhibited in the lobby of the firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 of its 960 employees. (New York Times)

Arts Festival Planned To Revitalize Downtown - May 13, 2002
A new $7.6 million arts festival, created to help spark the renaissance of Lower Manhattan, will seek to attract more than a million visitors to nearly 500 events at 20 locations over the next five months, and will feature performances by 300 artists including Sheryl Crow and Wynton Marsalis. The mostly free festival, billed as the city's largest in terms of the number of events and projected eventgoers, will be called Downtown N.Y.C. River-to-River Festival 2002, and it will begin later this month. (New York Times)

Cultural Institutions Downtown Coming Back To Life - May 3, 2002
For all the raw emotion and the painful reminders, the small inconveniences and the continuing repair, there is unmistakable evidence that Lower Manhattan is coming back to life. New restaurants are opening, old clubs are hosting concerts again, art galleries continue to exhibit, and a new film festival promises to bring revitalize residents there even more. (New York Times)

Movie Theater To Reopen Near Ground Zero - Apr 7, 2002
In another sign that life is bouncing back around Ground Zero, a shuttered movie megaplex across the street will reopen soon. The United Artists Battery Park City Stadium 16, which closed after sustaining severe exterior damage from the attacks on the World Trade Center towers Sept. 11, will reopen in time for the first TriBeCa Film Festival, scheduled for May 8-12. (New York Post)

Movie Theater To Reopen Near Ground Zero - Apr 7, 2002
In another sign that life is bouncing back around Ground Zero, a shuttered movie megaplex across the street will reopen soon. The United Artists Battery Park City Stadium 16, which closed after sustaining severe exterior damage from the attacks on the World Trade Center towers Sept. 11, will reopen in time for the first TriBeCa Film Festival, scheduled for May 8-12. (New York Post)

40,000 Kennedy Photo Negatives Missing After Attack - Mar 27, 2002
Tucked inside several manila envelopes in a safety-deposit box at 5 World Trade Center were some 40,000 negatives of John F. Kennedy taken by Jacques Lowe, one of his personal photographers. Chase all but confirmed that they were destroyed in a series of letters to Lowe's daughter, Thomasina Lowe, dating to Sept. 19. However, after investigating the remains of the safe where the pictures were stored, it is still unclear whether the pictures were destroyed or are instead missing. (New York Times)

Broadway Officials Donate $1 Million To City - Mar 26, 2002
In a surprise announcement, Broadway officials said they were donating to the city a $1 million profit from the $2.5 million in tickets that the city bought to prop up several Broadway shows after the World Trade Center attacks. Mayor Bloomberg quickly re-allocated the windfall to several nonprofit organizations that help fund small arts and education programs. (New York Post)

Tourism Promoters For New York Cite September 11 To Attract Visitors - Mar 24, 2002
The destruction of the World Trade Center has emerged as a powerful selling point for New York City, invoked again and again over the last six months to make the case that big events like the Super Bowl, the Grammy Awards ceremony and a proposed joint meeting of Congress all belong in New York. The case being made is striking in its appeal, in part, to sympathy for the purpose of drumming up tourist business. It appears to link notions of patriotism and civic duty to things like hotel bookings. (New York Times)

Museum Looking For Home For World Trade Center Photo Exhibit - Mar 17, 2002
A gripping photo exhibit of the devastated World Trade Center by a renowned New York photographer could skip the city because of a dispute involving the Museum of the City of New York. The exhibit, originally slated to be held at the Tweed Courthouse, is now uncertain because Mayor Bloomberg cast doubt recently on the move to the courthouse as a result of the city's financial crisis. (New York Daily News)

Another Ted Rall Cartoon Draws Anger, This Time From Firefighters - Mar 13, 2002
The cartoonist who sparked outrage with a swipe at World Trade Center "terror widows" has a new target Ñ the city's Bravest. Ted Rall's latest offering offends too. A new strip by Ted Rall depicts firefighters surrounded by cash, wearing fur coats and riding to fires in limousines. (New York Daily News)

World Trade Center Stamp To Be Unveiled - Mar 10, 2002
The U.S. Postal Service will unveil a special World Trade Center memorial stamp on Monday at a White House ceremony marking six months since the terrorist attacks on America. The special stamp will be worth 34 cents in postage but will cost 45 cents. The extra 11 cents will go to a fund set up by the Federal Emergency Management Administration to aid families of perished World Trade Center rescue workers. (New York Daily News)

Editorial Cartoon Angers Widows - Mar 6, 2002
An editorial cartoon that ridicules widows of World Trade Center victims as greedy and shallow publicity hounds drew instant outrage last night from the grieving survivors. Ted Rall's drawing, "Terror Widows," abruptly yanked from The New York Times Web site yesterday, skewers the women as getting rich from charity aid and preening for TV cameras. The cartoon can be found at Ted Rall's web site. (New York Daily News)

Families Group Asks CBS To Postpone September 11 Video - Mar 1, 2002
Bergen County Prosecutor William H. Schmidt, writing on behalf of families of September 11 victims, has asked CBS to postpone a March 10 documentary featuring exclusive videotape shot inside the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Schmidt suggested that CBS wait at least six more months before showing "9/11," because it could be upsetting to family and friends of those lost in the terrorist attacks. He did not threaten to take any legal action in a bid to stop the broadcast. (Newsday)

9/11, Ground Zero Etc. Will Be In The Language For Good, Lexicographers Say - Feb 24, 2002
9/11, Ground Zero, weaponize, theoterrorism, daisy cutter are among the words most likely to enter the English language permanently, making their way into dictionaries. Also burka and Taliban. Said one dictionary editor: "No one asks about chad anymore." (New York Times)

9/11 Changed NYC Museums - Feb 23, 2002
Many museums throughout the city have rethought their exhibitions, and even their missions, since September 11. (New York Times)

SoHo Photo Exhibit a WTC Shrine - Jan 20, 2002
A gallery in Soho filled with 4,000 donated photographs chronicling the events of September 11 has been trying to close its doors since Thanksgiving. However, the demand of 3,500 visitors streaming in every day has kept it open indefinitely. The exhibition does not single out any individual photographers - there are no names on the pictures, and no rights owned on any of them. The pictures, which can be seen at the 116 Prince St. gallery or online at their website (http://www.hereisnewyork.org) will eventually be moved to an archive somewhere else in the city. (Newsday)

Winter Garden at the Attack Site Looks to Spring - Jan 15, 2002
The 45,000-square-foot Winter Garden near the World Trade Center, one of the city's great public spaces, must now go through an extensive rebuilding effort. The public space, which featured a performance stage and a pedestrian bridge used by 80,000 people a day to get to 1 World Trade Center, is structurally sound but was significantly damaged by what engineers say was the "top ten floors of the north tower" falling on the complex. (New York Times)

Until 9/11, the City's Museum Magnet - Jan 6, 2002
Attendance and donations are way down at Lower Manhattan museums. While lines for the World Trade Center viewing platform stretch for blocks, visitors to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the South Street Seaport Museum, and the George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian find they have these museums mostly to themselves. (New York Times)

De Niro Plans a Film Festival in TriBeCa - Dec 6, 2001
In an effort to bring economic and emotional relief to downtown Manhattan, actor Robert De Niro and film producer Jane Rosenthal have accelerated their plans for a TriBeCa Film Festival. The four-day festival is now set to begin on May 1 with about 40 world premieres of independent and studio films, which will be eligible for jury awards, said Rosenthal. About 20 original short films, as well documentaries and student movies will also be shown. The films have not yet been selected. De Niro lives in the neighborhood and has based his film company there. (New York Times)

History Is Impatient to Embrace Sept. 11 - Nov 18, 2001
Museums and other institutions are considering how to collect and preserve the countless artifacts and images that documented the events of September 11. Some museums and galleries are already presenting exhibitions about the tragedy. For example, "New York September 11 by Magnum Photographers," which will open Tuesday at the New-York Historical Society, is the first of at least six exhibitions on the events of that day planned by the society. But not everyone believes that an immediate response is necessarily best. The Museum of the City of New York, for example, is not planning an exhibition directly connected to September 11 until it moves from its current Fifth Avenue location to the Tweed Courthouse near City Hall in 2004. (New York Times)