Conceptual Art: Memorialization

First, it was really eerie reading about the debate about how to memorialize the Oklahoma City bombing and how Goldberger states that the building of the memorial at that “Ground Zero” was not as pressing as rebuilding the World Trade Center after the attacks. It was eerie because even though this article was written in 2002, and he states that there is already a plan for the site, it is now 11 years after the September 11^th attacks on the Twin Towers, and the memorial is still being built and what goes up around the memorial is still being debated (i.e., the mosque).

I do not know if I would have ever considered memorials to be art. Not that they are not art, just that I would not have ever categorized memorials as art. But after reading so much about conceptual art, I would have to say, now, that memorials are most definitely conceptual art, with the concept of honoring someone, something and/or some event.

I think the memorial that was chosen for the Oklahoma City bombing is especially concept-based because they chose not to have statues of people, but rather chairs to represent the people who were killed as a result of the bombing. I am really glad they chose to represent all who died, as opposed to a few statues of heroes, because I think the chairs are meaningful and haunting and powerful. This memorial reminds me of one of the 10^th anniversary of the September 11^th memorials. On September 11, 2001, 2,753 chairs were set up in Bryant Park in honor of the people who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings. I think those who planned this memorial probably were influenced by the memorial in Oklahoma City, which, for me, makes the memorial even more powerful.