|
Scarlett Pons installs her pottery pieces beside her husband's paintings for 'Community Artists: Remembering 9/11' exhibit opening Sunday.
Annie Wright and Andy Phillips of Acorn Sign Graphics install panels for the 'Fredericksburg Remembers 9/11' display at the Fredericksburg Area Museum and Cultural Center. The exhibit opens Sunday; museum admission is free that day.
A New York Fire Department cap is part of the museum's |
BY CLINT SCHEMMER
Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, will offer the public its first look at two regional exhibits that recall and reflect on those horrific events and their aftermath.
Opening at the Fredericksburg Area Museum and Cultural Center, both shows spring directly from people's experiences, including those of local residents. Accounts from eyewitnesses, survivors, first responders, military personnel and federal workers are the crux of the main exhibition, "Fredericksburg Remembers 9/11," which occupies the ground-floor galleries of Old Town Hall.
Huge wall panels pair riveting photographs from Arlington, New York and Shanksville, Pa., with quotations from those caught up in the day's traumas or carried along in their later, lingering eddies.
In one, Pentagon eyewitness Mutahara Mobashar recalls being ordered to evacuate the Navy Annex: "We moved outside to the parking lot. I saw lots of smoke and flames. My first thought was, I wish I could serve (in the Air Force) again. All I could do was stand there and watch."
In another, Arlington County Fire Chief James Schwartz remembers being part of a parade of rescue vehicles responding to the attack: " there is this gaping gash on the west side of the building the lawn is littered with casualties."
An array of artifacts buttresses the personal experiences: limestone from the smoke-blackened west side of the Pentagon where American Airlines Flight 77 struck, part of a World Trade Center steel beam fashioned into a cross, an Arlington firefighter's emergency gear and uniform.
Some of the simplest items are the most moving:
A backboard used by LifeCare medevac crews to transport injured people from the Pentagon to hospitals.
A copy of the Quran.
Squishy, a Koala bear toy that Army Maj. Ed Sabo of Fredericksburg was given by his daughters, Katie, Lizzie and Torie, to keep him safe when he deployed to Diwaynia, Iraq, in 2010. He carried Squishy, tucked in a uniform pocket, virtually everywhere.
A banner from Operation Noble Eagle, the months-long homeland-security effort to safeguard U.S. facilities immediately after Sept. 11, 2001. Local members of the Virginia Army National Guard received the banner after protecting Fort McNair, home of the National Defense University, in Washington.
Mary Helen Dellinger, the museum's senior vice president for collections and exhibitions, spent months soliciting a broad cross-section of participants' first-person accounts.
For some, she said, it was the first time they'd opened up about their experiences and memories. For many, it was painful. She said a few people she contacted declined to be interviewed.
Complete transcripts of Dellinger's conversations with contributors are included in the exhibit, and can be read by anyone willing to take the time.
"Fredericksburg Remembers 9/11" opens to the public at noon Sunday. Admission to the entire museum complex, which includes two buildings and more than a dozen major galleries, is free that day.
A companion exhibit, in the Mansard Gallery of the museum's Catherine W. Jones McKann Center, across William Street from Old Town Hall, complements the main show.
"Community Artists: Remembering 9/11" brings together six area artists who each present an original work that interprets events surrounding the attacks on the United States.
Created in various media, their pieces explore themes such as "the missing persons of New York City, the attack on the World Trade Center, and the disappearance of things that once were so commonplace in our lives," the museum said. The show is the latest in its Community Artist series.
Yesterday, curatorial staff, artists and exhibit designers and fabricators worked furiously to put the finishing touches on both exhibits, which will be on view through Jan. 31.
Clint Schemmer: 540/368-5029
Email: cschemmer@freelancestar.com
Admission is free this Sunday. Both exhibits will be on view through Jan. 31. The museum's website is famcc.org.
