Picturing 9/11: Peace, Love, and Understanding

I spent today, the 10^th 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 11^th 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.]