The memorial's arc: Between Berlin's Denkmal and New York City's 9/11 Memorial. (July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Young, James E
• Editors: Schacter, Daniel L; Welker, Michael
• Is Part Of: Memory studies. Volume 9:Number 3(2016:Jul.)
• Page Start: 325
• Page End: 331
• Publication Date: 2016-07
• Subjects: collected memory -- collective memory -- counter-memorials -- Denkmal -- memorials -- National 9/11 Memorial -- negative-form memorials; Memory -- Periodicals; Memory -- Periodicals; 153.1205
• DOI: 10.1177/1750698016645266
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1750-6980

Abstract

Without direct reference to the Holocaust or its contemporary "counter-monuments, " Michael Arad's design for the National 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero is nonetheless inflected by an entire post-war generation's formal preoccupation with loss, absence, and regeneration. This is also a preoccupation they share with post-Holocaust poets, philosophers, artists, and composers: how to articulate a void without filling it in? How to formalize irreparable loss without seeming to repair it? In this article, I imagine an arc of memorial forms over the last 70 years or so and how, in fact, post-World War I and World War II memorials have evolved along a discernible path, all with visual and conceptual echoes of their predecessors. As Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial was informed by earlier World War I and even World War II memorial vernaculars, her design also broke the mold that made Holocaust counter-memorials and other negative-form memorials possible.