issues in the collection and conservation of american ... · photography, cemetery art, religious...

A BS T RAC T

A new category of artifacts is beginning to overwhelmmuseums, historical societies, and other institutions andeven private conservators. I am referring to these artifactsas “American vernacular memorial art.” They are the mate-rials that are left as mementos at makeshift memorials orspontaneous shrines, such as in the wake of the OklahomaCity bombing and the September 11, 2001, terroristattacks. The conservation of these artifacts is quite uniqueand problematic due to the damage they have sufferedserving as outdoor memorials, some for many months at atime.

These new vernacular memorials raise unique andimportant issues in art conservation and museologicalethics. Many museums don’t know whether these materi-als should even ethically be collected or how much ofthese materials to collect. There are a variety of opinions asto whether these materials will offer an historical perspec-tive in the narrative of an event. In addition, there is alsotremendous disagreement over the actual conservationprocedures for these artifacts.

There has also not been a comprehensive narrative ofAmerican vernacular memorial art. We need such a narra-tive because this phenomenon has now become aprominent part of the contemporary American visual land-scape.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

“American vernacular memorial art” is memorial art bycommon people, not commissioned artists, which hasdeveloped a multitude of new forms of expression in theUnited States. Memorialization has evolved from the pri-vate and personal to public, demonstrative, and collective

displays of mourning. From individual mementos such asposthumous portraits and treasured locks of hair kept pri-vately by the bereaved, a plethora of sidewalk andcyberspace memorials now confronts the American public.These new vernacular forms have affected the attitudesand policies of public institutions and the design anddevelopment of public memorial sites and museums.

These types of tragic events and reactions are certainlynot unique to the United States (witness the reaction toPrincess Diana’s death). Rather than exploring this as aworldwide phenomenon, this research focuses predomi-nantly on American events and institutions, which arealready facing a growing pressure to address this type ofcollection.

Books and articles have been written on post-mortemphotography, cemetery art, religious shrines from Easternand Western traditions, spontaneous shrines, roadsidememorials, graffiti art, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,the AIDS quilt, and the sociology and psychology of thegrieving process. However, they have not been tied togeth-er as a comprehensive narrative of American vernacularmemorial art. Such a narrative would chronicle its evolu-tion, connect these different forms of expression, and giveus a basis for understanding contemporary vernacularforms of memorial art. We need such a narrative becausethis phenomenon has now become a prominent part ofthe contemporary American visual landscape.

This paper will attempt to answer the following ques-tions raised by this new phenomenon:

• What is American vernacular memorial art?• How has it impacted museum collections?• What conservation issues does it raise?• What ethical issues does it raise?• What is its place in the narrative of American art

history?

Issues in the Collection and Conservation

of American Vernacular Memorial Art

L AU R E N A. FA R B E R

The Book and Paper Group Annual 24 (2005) 5

Presented at the Book & Paper Group Session, AIC 33rd Annual

Meeting, June 8–13, 2005, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Received

for publication Fall 2006.

A B R I E F H I S T O R Y O F A M E R I C A N V E R N AC U L A R

M E M O R I A L A RT

The artifacts of American vernacular memorial art havelong been regarded as curiosities of the macabre in rela-tively obscure historic collections. Some of the earliestexamples of American vernacular memorial art are theposthumous paintings created by itinerant portraitists inthe late seventeenth century. Commissioned by themourning family, these works were displayed in the fami-ly home and generally remained in their possession.

As described in Burns (1990), hand-rendered memori-al tributes to George Washington became very popular afterhis death in 1799. This gave rise to a national vernaculartrend to memorialize others. These tributes were created inthe form of needlework samplers, quilts, jewelry contain-ing a lock of hair (or made entirely out of the hair),watercolors and oil paintings — and, if the family couldafford it, mourning attire. The leading artisans producingthese memorial mementos were young women who weretaught these arts in finishing school.

In 1835, Currier and Ives offered to the public inex-pensive lithographic prints that individuals could purchaseand personalize to memorialize their loved ones. Insteadof portraits, these prints incorporated the standard icono-graphic elements of the times, such as willow trees, urns,and weeping women and children. These cheap printseffectively made obsolete the more expensive and labor-intensive hand-rendered mementos.

With the advent of the camera in 1839, the family nowmight have a photograph (a daguerreotype or later process)of the deceased. This could be remounted and reframedwithin a black housing to serve as a memorial. In case aprevious photographic portrait did not exist, traveling pho-tographers specializing in post-mortem portraits of thedeceased could create a memento for the family. Such post-mortem photography continues to this day, when familiessometimes take their own photographs at the funeralhome.

Another nineteenth-century memorial phenomenonwas the development of the pastoral landscaped gardencemetery. One of the earliest in America was Green-WoodCemetery, which opened in Brooklyn, New York, in 1838.Families commissioned huge monuments and memorialsculptures of their own design for their loved ones. Asnoted in Richman (1998), Green-Wood gave the Americanpublic its first appreciation of sculpture in general, becom-ing such a popular Sunday destination that it led directly tothe development and creation of the first large Americanpublic park, New York City’s Central Park, designed byFrederick Law Olmstead.

In the first half of the twentieth century, memorials tocommon citizens began to appear in public, with the erec-tion of statues and plaques listing the casualties of the Great

War. (This is distinct from memorials to famous individu-al statesmen and members of the officer class whotraditionally came from the elite and educated classes.)These war memorials were commonly placed in parks or intown squares throughout America.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the memo-rial traditions of new immigrant communities began toemerge in the United States. The ancestor shrines of Asiancommunities and the public shrines of Latino and otherCatholic immigrant communities were echoed in theAmerican landscape. These took the form of roadsidememorials to accident victims, of graffiti memorials on thesides of buildings as reported by Feur (2002), and even of“ R. I . P.” tags on automobile rear windows or on the sub-way cars that passed through the heart of the inner city.

In the ghettos of America, what began as an under-ground movement to memorialize the victims of drug warsand gang shootings evolved into a new form of urbanmural painting. As noted by Cooper and Sciorra (1992),this subversive display shocked many citizens and publico f ficials, for not only did it deface public property, but itg l o r i fied and memorialized some of society’s more notori-ous citizens along with the innocent poor. The forms andstyles of this “gangsta art” have grown and now are foundin mainstream advertising and throughout the music andvideo media of America. A number of the graffiti artistshave parlayed their skills into legitimate businesses.

The 1970s marked a turning point in the evolution ofAmerican vernacular memorials from the familial to thepublic milieu. Most people are not aware that the VietnamVeterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., was built inresponse to a grassroots movement started by a single vet-eran, Jan Scruggs. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fundraised approximately $9,900,000 entirely through privatedonations — no federal funds were needed.

Scruggs then lobbied Congress for a site for the memo-rial. As described on the Web site of the National Pa r kService, United States Department of the Interior (2002),President Carter signed legislation to provide a site inConstitution Gardens near the Lincoln Memorial in 1980.The Memorial Fund held a competition to choose thearchitect, which was open to any U.S. citizen eighteenyears of age or older. An architecture student, Maya Lin,won with a design that incorporated every knownAmerican casualty of the Vietnam war, now familiarlyknown as “The Wall.”

Since the creation of the Vietnam Memorial, peoplehave left thousands of objects (letters, photographs, dolls,teddy bears, and even a Harley Davidson motorcycle)below the names of their loved ones, creating impromptupersonal (but public) shrines. From the beginning, thesegifts have been collected each night from the memorial site,archived, and cataloged by a Parks Department employee,himself a Vietnam Veteran. I believe this to have been the

6 The Book and Paper Group Annual 24 (2005)

first major institutional collection of American vernacularmemorial artifacts. As noted in Updike (2000), some ofthese materials are also now on permanent exhibit at theSmithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

In 1985, another group outside the mainstream met inSan Francisco to document lives they feared history wouldignore, the lives of AIDS victims who were their friendsand lovers. A folk memorial form of the quilt, conceivedby gay rights activist Cleve Jones, was adopted by the gaycommunity and quickly spread throughout the countryand the world. It culminated in the AIDS quilt, asdescribed on the Web site of the NAMES Pr o j e c tFoundation (2002).

Building on long-standing folk tradition, the quilt iscomprised of more than forty-four thousand panels com-memorating the lives of family members, friends, or loverswho have died from AIDS. Within the three-by-six-footstandard size established, invention and improvisationreign.

Since the mid-twentieth century, an increasing num-ber of sites of human tragedies have become “hallowedground.” Among these are memorial museums or parks atAuschwitz and Hiroshima, the U.S. detention camps forJapanese-American citizens, the sunken ships at Pe a r lHarbor, and even the rediscovered hulk of the Titanic.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial is anotherturning point in the growth of direct, public expression onhallowed ground. On April 19, 1995, a domestic terroristblew up the Murrah Federal building, killing 168 people,including children, and deeply shocking the nation.Immediately afterwards, people started leaving memorialtributes on the construction fence surrounding the bomb-

Farber Issues in the Collection and Conservation of American Vernacular Memorial Art 7

ing site. This became the first large-scale spontaneousshrine to emerge on a fence or wall that had not been cre-ated specifically for purposes of remembrance (fig. 1).

As noted by Linenthal (2001), the survivors and the vic-tims’ families, who were instrumental in the entire designprocess of the official memorial, insisted that some of thesite’s original perimeter fence remain as part of the offi-cial memorial. “The Fence” not only continues to collectexpressions of grief about the original bombing, but alson o w, in a sense, serves as America’s Wailing Wall. Theauthor recently observed numerous commemorationsthere of the attacks of September 11, 2001. In a subsequenti n t e r v i e w, Jane Thomas, Collections Manager at theOklahoma City National Memorial, mentioned collectingtributes from the Fence to various policemen and firemenwho were killed at other locations in the line of duty.

The official memorial includes a field of 168 emptychairs, each inscribed with a victim’s name, as described onthe website of the Oklahoma City National MemorialTrust (2002). People have been leaving an outpouring ofmementos on these chairs as well.

The nature of what people leave on the chairs is differ-ent from what visitors usually leave under the names onthe Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall. Most visitors heredid not know the victims personally. They often leave sou-venirs of their visit, such as business cards, key chains,d r i v e r’s licenses and license plates, badges, or just theirnames on any available surface they have on hand. AsGrider (2001) notes sagaciously, people are commemorat-ing in this way that “they were there” as witnesses orpilgrims. This sense of pilgrimage is what leads Grider tocall these sites shrines rather than memorials.

Similar spontaneous shrines arose atColumbine High School in Littleton,Colorado, site of the killing of students andteachers in 1999, and at Texas A&MU n i v e r s i t y, site of the collapse of a bonfirestructure that killed twelve students, also in1999. Numerous shrines sprang up at the sitesof the former World Trade Center in NewYork City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,and the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania inSeptember 2001. The spontaneous memorialsfor the World Trade Center victims were on ascale and of a duration never before seen. Thecreation of lasting permanent memorials onthese sites still continues to draw tremendouscontroversy and public interest.

Many of the spontaneous memorials in thewake of the World Trade Center and Pe n t a g o nattacks began with the posting of leaflets askingfor information on missing persons. Theyevolved to include thousands of memorialcandles, flowers, poems, prose, and simple

Fig. 1. The Fence at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, photographed April2003.

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messages and pictures on sidewalks and walls. The fire-houses of New York City were also sites of a tremendousamount of vernacular and charitable participation.

The posters seeking missing persons from the Wo r l dTrade Center attack were eerily reminiscent of the postersseeking missing political victims in Argentina and Chile,los desaparecidos. As described in Dolf-Bonekamper (2002),relatives and friends of the missing in those countries con-tinued to post these leaflets well beyond realisticexpectations of the victims’ return. After the World TradeCenter attack, relatives and friends also continued to post“missing” leaflets for weeks afterwards. The walls wherethese leaflets were posted often grew into spontaneousshrines as other people added their own tokens of tribute,grief, and support.

There were also long-standing memorial walls or fencesnear Trinity Church, Saint Vincent’s Hospital, Saint Pa u l ’ sChurch, and other less visible sites such as the wall of OldSaint Patrick’s Cathedral in Little Italy. As of 2006, a displayof hand-made memorial tiles still adorns an undistin-guished fenced area near a make-your-own ceramics store,Our Name is Mud, at the corner of Greenwich andSeventh Avenues (from where one once had striking viewsof the iconic Twin Towers).

In at least one case, a grassroots memorial effort hasgrown into an actual new “institution.” In Shanksville,Pennsylvania, near the site of the crash of Flight 93 onSeptember 11, the Reverend Alphonse Mascherino boughta small, abandoned church building and created a non-denominational “UAL Flight 93 Memorial Chapel.” Thechapel is being incorporated as a non-profit educationalinstitution, with plans to include a memorial depository,visitor’s center, and library. The Rev. Mascherino is work-ing entirely outside of established government andmuseum protocols in the establishment of this memorial.He relies on unsolicited donations and his own and con-tributed labor for the realization of his vision. Throughoutthe chapel, Mascherino is incorporating and repurposingAmerican symbols, such as his Thunder Bell, Torch of Liberty,Patriot Tree, and Peace Totem Pole.

The events of that September also inspired two separatephotographic exhibits started by individuals in New YorkC i t y. Both of these showed hundreds of photographs byamateurs, tourists, and professionals that poured in fromeverywhere, many with no attribution to the photogra-phers. Thousands of people came to view these exhibits,both in New York and as they toured the world. Both Hereis New York and the September 11 Photo Project havepublished books of photographs with the same names. Yo ucan also buy individual photographs from these exhibits(with all proceeds going to charity) and this is still an ongo-ing endeavor (fig. 2).

These photographs and books constitute a new form ofmemorial art, which we could call “American vernacular


memorial photography.” While people have, since thebeginning of photography, kept memorial portraits and pic-tures from funerals, for the first time people are buyingpictures of an event from amateur photographers, not pho-tojournalists, to act as a memorial.

Other organized and impromptu memorials haveappeared in cyberspace. Professional and amateur writerscollected their stories about September 11 and createdwebsites memorializing the event. The New York Ti m e s r a nan unprecedented series of reportorial portraits of the thou-sands of victims. It continues to run on the New York Ti m e sWeb site and a large portion (with, presumably, the rest tofollow) has been published as a book entitled Portraits ofGrief.

T H E L E G I T I M ACY O F V E R N AC U L A R M E M O R I A L S

A S A RT

In order for vernacular memorials to qualify as a legiti-mate aspect of art history, we must establish that they are aform of art, not just historical artifacts. To begin with, mod-ern vernacular memorials are a direct evolution of earlierforms that are generally recognized as memorial art.

For example, early American memorial portraits areoften included in the American art collections of majormuseums and are discussed under American art history instandard textbooks. Memorial quilts and samplers alsoreceive the same treatments. Black-bordered cartes-de-vis-ite and post-mortem photographs are acknowledged partsof photography’s history as an art.

Yet while modern vernacular memorial art follows inthe tradition of memorial art, the modern form has evolved

Fig. 2. Polish Soldier Memorial across the Hudson River fromthe burning World Trade Center, September 11, 2001, copyrightHue Way (Wei He) 2001. This photograph appeared in bothHere is New York and the September 11 Photo Project.

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in important ways. In the past, when people were movedby a loss, such as of a family member, they would createtheir own personal items of memorial art. Usually thesewould be in forms prescribed by the culture of the times,such as jewelry made from a lock of the deceased’s hair,or a child’s drawing displayed at home, or a special head-stone or statue at the cemetery.

Now, however, people are using an unlimited, imagi-native range of materials, media, and visual forms.Individuals create homemade memorials for people whoare neither family members, personal friends, nor famousstatesmen. Moreover, rather than display these mementosmori at home or in their local community, they bring themas offerings to sometimes faraway sites and place themalongside the offerings of hundreds of other people, asparts of huge, impromptu assemblages.

In modern art, many artists have tried to reproduce achildlike spontaneity in their work. They juxtapose every-day objects with the strange or uncanny to createemotional effects. Now in these memorials we have huge,truly spontaneous collages, which communicate visually,directly, and with tremendous visceral impact.

These collages are formed in a unique collective pro-cess, which brings together disparate individuals from allwalks of life, from a multitude of ethnic, socio-economic,religious, and regional groups. The way people place theircontributions also has its own unique aesthetic. As Grider(2001) observes, “These sacred folk art assemblages . . .reveal a coherent organizational principle in the arrange-ment of memorabilia which usually results in anaesthetically satisfying appearance.” The fence, wall, orsidewalk is transformed into a powerful sculptural elementwithin the community landscape.

The intensity of people’s emotional reactions to horrif-ic events and tragic accidents is the catalyst for thesemonumental acts of artistic creation. We can see evidenceof this intensity when people arrive at the site, and throughan overwhelming need to add their own personal expres-sion to the assemblage, improvise with whatever materialsare at hand. People literally pull the shirts off their backs,or utilize unused children’s disposable diapers, and writeor draw on them and attach them to the fence. They areparticipants in a mass historic public performance.

Another recent example of mass participation in anartistic form of memorialization is the AIDS quilt, whichis considered the largest organized community arts pro-ject in the world. To g e t h e r, the quilt and thesespontaneous shrines probably constitute the largest col-lective artworks in the annals of art history.

The items that make up the collages of spontaneousshrines are often artistically interesting in their own right.In addition to individual pieces of inspired homemade art,there is a range of “repurposed” objects that is stunning inits variety. There are memorabilia such as baseball caps and


tee shirts, baby pacifiers, cheerleader’s megaphones, andteddy bears. There are religious and cultural symbols suchas Christian crosses and angels, Japanese origami cranes,Native American dream-catchers, and the piles of stonesthat Jews leave on headstones.

While there is a common “vocabulary” of items at thevarious memorials, as noted by Grider (2001), there arealso specific forms of expression that evolve at particularsites. For example, at several memorials near thePennsylvania crash site of Flight 93, which went down onSeptember 11, people have painted messages on smallstones. At the memorials for the NASA astronauts killed inthe breakup of shuttle Columbia, Grider noted a prolifer-ation of balloons, perhaps tokens of safe flight or ascent toheaven.

Spontaneous shrines, once ephemeral, were viewed assimple reactions to local tragedies or historical events. Thefact that they now in many cases become permanentdynamic shrines demonstrates that they are developing along-lasting aesthetic of emotional value to many people.Zeitlin and Harlow (2001) have discussed people’s use ofart, song, and dance as an important part of the contem-porary grieving process. The Fence at Oklahoma City,which has become a permanent, evolving work of vernac-ular memorial art, is a prime example of this form ofexpression.

There has been a well-documented, oft-repeated pat-tern throughout art history of new forms of expression notbeing considered “real art.” Examples are photography,Impressionist painting, graffiti art, outsider art, and variousfolk arts. The public understanding of aesthetic valueevolves over time to legitimize these new forms of expres-sion.

The public’s use of popular, iconic imagery, such asstuffed teddy bears and renderings of broken hearts, alsoc o n flicts with traditional notions of, and attitudes towards,collectible art. Numerous museum personnel havedescribed these collections to the author as being devoid ofartistic merit and historic content, while others think theopposite. I expect that this high-art/low-art divisionregarding vernacular memorials is evolving along the samepath that folk art and outsider art traveled in becoming rec-ognized, established genres within the art world and inmuseums.

Professional artists may have well-formed theories ofimpermanence as a form of artistic expression that con-flict with curators’ and collectors’ desire to promotepermanence of the artwork. We can see here that vernacu-lar artists without these conscious theories, commonpeople creating collective forms of public expression, alsocreate conflicts with traditional notions of curatorship andpermanence.

T H E I M PAC T O F V E R N AC U L A R M E M O R I A L A RT

O N M U S E U M S

In a few short years, a number of major Americanmuseums and institutions have started to collect the mate-rials left at memorial sites that would otherwise bedestroyed by weather or vandalism. The National Pa r k sService has been collecting the materials left at the VietnamVeterans Memorial and the Smithsonian has been addingsome of these artifacts to its permanent collection. PamelaWest, director of the Museum Resources Center, as quot-ed in Updike (2000), said that in the beginning, as thecollection was forming, “We had to invent what we weredoing. . . . It is like doing history in reverse.” She then goeson to say, “Instead of a bunch of curators deciding what ispreserved, we take just about everything. . . . The publicare the curators; we are the caretakers.”

Jane Thomas, Collections Manager at the OklahomaCity National Memorial, has been collecting and catalogingthe materials left on the Fence and on the chairs at theMemorial. She also described to me how there were noestablished guidelines or policies for conserving living,evolving memorials.

In Pennsylvania, the Somerset Historical Center hasbeen collecting, archiving, and conserving materials left atthe Flight 93 crash site memorial. They are acting as long-term temporary custodians on behalf of the National ParkService, which will eventually create a permanent memo-rial/museum at the site. This could take five to ten years,depending on available funding. This places a huge bur-den on a small, local historical society, and is an example of


how institutions have recognized the need to collect ver-nacular memorial artifacts, even though the necessaryfacilities, personnel, and funding are not yet in place (figs.3–4).

Since there are no guidelines for creating these kinds ofcollections, museums have had to turn to experts in relat-ed fields. Dr. Sylvia Grider, an archeologist and folklorist atTexas A&M University, has developed some of the firsttechniques for systematically collecting and catalogingthese materials, using methods borrowed from archeology.Her associate, Dr. Wayne Smith, has adapted techniquesfrom marine archeology to help conserve water-damagedmaterials from these outdoor memorials.

Ed Linenthal, a noted historian and author, has beeninstrumental in guiding institutions and collectionsthrough this uncharted territory. Other official memorialsites and museums also help by establishing models forthese new vernacular memorial sites.

In New York, the Museum of the City of New Yo r k ,the New-York Historical Society, and the New York CityMunicipal Archives have been actively collecting, archiv-ing, and photographing items from a multitude ofspontaneous memorials related to the September 11 attack.As described in the Web site of the Museum of the City ofNew York (2002), the museum, in conjunction with theSmithsonian Institute, has archived materials from base-ball caps to teddy bears, along with smashed fire enginesand debris of the former Trade Center itself. The museumintends to preserve these artifacts for museums, memorials,and historic trusts throughout the United States.

Fig. 3. The temporary Flight 93 memorial site in Shanksville,Pennsylvania, April 2003.

Fig. 4. Detail of the temporary Flight 93 memorial site inShanksville, Pennsylvania, April 2003.

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In an interview Ellin Burke, collections manager at theMuseum of the City of New York, described how theirlimited resources are being overwhelmed by the suddenaddition of these new collections with their incorporationof eclectic, problematic materials. Laura McCann, deputydirector at the New York City Municipal Archives, said inanother interview that space, money, and other resourceswere sorely taxed in housing the collection of artifacts leftfrom the World Trade Center memorial in Union SquarePark.

Another curator of a small New York City museumdedicated to the uniformed services decided to simplythrow out their entire collection of September 11 memo-rial artifacts. Her reasoning was that the collection did notreflect the museum’s mission statement or intent and thatthe entire collection of September 11 memorabilia wasartistically insignificant and without historical merit. (Thiscurator did not want her remarks attributed and is notincluded in the reference notes.)

V E R N AC U L A R M E M O R I A L A RT A N D I SS U E S I N

M U S E O L O G I C A L E T H I CS

These new collections create new kinds of ethical issuesfor museums and other collectors. For example, in manycases the site of memorial and occurrence are identical.Should the location be left undisturbed as a gravesite, ortransformed as an active memorial?

Should people’s artifacts be left outside in a memorialsetting or be brought inside to be preserved? Does remov-ing memorial artwork from a shrine destroy its artisticmerit? Its spiritual power? How can ephemeral materialsbe protected without negating their spontaneous nature? Isit more respectful of memorial creations and those theycommemorate to leave them in situ, even if they are vul-nerable to weather and vandalism or prey tos o u v e n i r-seekers? What of the desires of the creators of thememorial, and what to do when intentions clash?

In some cases, institutions decide at a certain point tophotograph, then dismantle and archive the site. In othercases, the site is left undisturbed permanently or for anindefinite period, deferring engagement with these diffi-cult issues of creation, intent, and custody.

At Oklahoma City, if a victim’s family has placed anitem on the Fence or on a chair, they have the option ofhaving it left there as long as they wish. Other items areremoved after thirty days. Thus there is a privileging ofobjects separate from aesthetic merit.

Most items left at the Oklahoma City NationalMemorial, except foodstuffs and flowers, are cataloged andarchived. Teddy bears, of which thousands have been left,are reused in a new enterprise, Project Hope. They arelabeled, conserved, and sent to the victims of September11 and other disasters throughout the world — exporting


them in new acts of comfort separate from the intent ofthe artist/contributor.

Other institutions have different policies. TheSomerset Historical Center allows items to stay out at thetemporary memorial site indefin i t e l y, until the artifacts arein danger of falling apart, to serve as memorial, at whichpoint they are collected, archived, and conserved. Te x a sA&M University photographed, dismantled, collected, andarchived the bonfire memorial site within weeks of the dis-aster. The Museum of the City of New York dismantledand collected all sections of the Bellevue Wall after theyhad been on site for months.

Unintended cultural effects result from the nature ofthe materials being collected. In Oklahoma City, JaneThomas described the problems arising from the placingof Native American symbols, such as dream-catchers, atthe site. As she says in her survey response, “only NativeAmericans may use eagle feathers (an endangered species).. . . [These] items may be removed only by persons whohave been blessed by the Shaman. . . . None of our staffhas yet been blessed. However, we will take that step inthe future.” In addition, she mentions “some items[Native American artifacts] . . . are to protect the site. Theywould serve no purpose if we took them into the archives.Therefore, they are left on the site.”

In a subsequent interview, Thomas described how peo-ple have left foodstuffs as memorial items. These attractbirds, which can leave corrosive droppings on the memo-rial artifacts. She has tried to discourage these kinds ofitems, but other caretakers have placed no such limitation.Barbara Black, curator at the Somerset Historical Center,mentioned to me that she wishes not to influence whatsort of artifacts are brought to the memorial site and real-izes that many items will not be salvageable.

Other items that identify individuals by name or imagehave raised privacy issues. As long as the item is part of alarger memorial, it’s considered to be in the publicdomain. But if an item is displayed or reproduced sepa-r a t e l y, you must obtain a release from the individual orfrom the estate. Jane Thomas regularly finds herself con-sulting with legal experts on these matters.

Barbara Black, in her survey response, described someissues stemming from the recent nature of the events: “Dowe save everything? If not, how selective can we be with-out knowing the full importance especially when thehistorical significance of September 11 is still not known?”She cited the lack of institutional guidelines for collections,such as how much conservation is appropriate for theseartifacts.

She also mentioned that for government museums, thereligious nature of some items could be problematic(probably due to the separation of church and state). Asthe materials and nature of vernacular memorial art con-

tinues to evolve, new ethical concerns will no doubt con-tinue to arise.

V E R N AC U L A R M E M O R I A L A RT A N D I SS U E S I N

C O N S E RVAT I O N

Vernacular memorial art, in its many historic forms, hasalways posed particular challenges to conservators.Cemetery headstones, for example, are a form of vernacu-lar memorial art that needs long-term protection from theeffects of time, weather, and vandalism.

Modern memorial murals by graffiti artists have theirown set of conservation issues, as mentioned in Cooperand Sciorra (1994). Some murals were painted on imper-manent walls such as construction perimeters. Sometimesa property owner regained control of owned space, or rivalcliques sought visual dominance by painting over a graffi-ti artist’s effort. Ravaged by environmental effects or byvandalism, defacement, or outright destruction, thesemurals have generally been conserved in the form ofrestoration by repainting the vandalized originals orrepainting the mural at another locale. Questions of inten-tion and authenticity multiply.

Even legal outdoor memorial murals pose problems interms of permanence. The artists may have used housepaints and aerosol spray paints that were not necessarilymeant for exterior use. These paints of recent manufacturehave not stood the test of time in other contexts, let alonein a harsh exterior environment.

Wild fluctuations of temperature and freezing-thawingcycles can wreak havoc on a painted surface, let alone itssupport (brick, stucco, and/or wood). The capillary effectof water on a painted surface can cause paint cracking anddeconsolidation. Salt effervescence from stucco surfacesmay leach out onto and bloom across the mural’s surface.Paint can crackle, lift, and chip off. Pollution, soot, and carexhaust can also darken and corrode the paint.

Ultraviolet light from the sun is probably one of themost destructive forces in rendering a painted memorialimpermanent. The sun will fade, bleach, and obliterate col-orant over time and cause binders to deteriorate. Muralsare particularly susceptible to this. While intending themurals to be permanent, an artist may not have consideredthat, in an exterior setting, care and maintenance would benecessary if the mural were to survive.

Another form of vernacular memorial with difficultconservation issues is the AIDS quilt. It is exhibited nation-ally and internationally, presenting difficult conservationissues. The quilt is handled extensively, which is at oddswith museum protocols. While many museums and insti-tutions have exhibited it, it is left in the care of grassrootsvolunteers without conservation training, resources, orexperience.


The author conducted a survey of the various chaptersof the NAMES project, and responses indicated that therewas indeed noticeable damage to the quilt panels causedby handling, transportation, and display. As the quilt hasgrown, these de facto archivists have had difficulty findingplaces to store the panels. They have had to stop showingearly parts of the quilt that are now too damaged or fragileto handle. Conservation concerns have dictated restrictionson materials for the making of new panels, enforcing stan-dardization not present at the quilt’s inception. Thechapters have learned from experience to prohibit the useof materials such as paper or sequins in the constructionof panels, so as to extend the life of the quilt.

Since the quilt is a composite of various mixed media,some of the disparate materials are already causing adversereactions. There is staining and rust from metals and stain-ing and failure of adhesion from glues. With age, textilesand paper have become embrittled, and tears, damage andfading are frequent problems with the quilt. However,parts of the quilt made from polyester fabric might fare bet-ter than others over time. I believe that frequent handlingand the lack of adequate storage, institutional care, or con-servation will prevent the quilt as a whole from becominga permanent historic artifact.

The most obvious conservation problems associatedwith artifacts from spontaneous shrines come from theirexposure to weeks and months of weather, sunlight, andpollution. Fungus and mold are very common. For exam-ple, Smith and Grider (2001) describe in detail theemergency conservation of waterlogged bibles left at thememorial to the students killed by the collapse of the bon-fire structure at Texas A&M University in 1999.

In my subsequent interview with Grider, she also men-tioned the difficulty of conserving items such as thestudents’ “grodes,” coveralls that they wore throughout thebonfire construction and that were subsequently stainedwith blood, sweat, and urine. Barbara Black, curator at theSomerset Historical Center, wrote in her survey response:“Plastic of every type, cellophane tape, masking tape, ducttape, rusted metal, brittle paper, laminated paper continueto be problematic in their long term care. . . . With theincrease in ‘memorialization’ of current events, the muse-um world has been tasked with new issues.”

In New York, following the September 11 attack, manyof the memorial walls were constructed with similar mate-rials. Other problems arise from the media themselves,such as markers, fugitive inks, photographs, etc.

The Wall of Hope and Remembrance on the outside ofSaint Vincent’s Hospital in downtown New York was along expanse of posters of the missing, prayers, and pho-tographs that were collected by the hospital and taped tothe wall in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Itwas encased in acrylic plastic on a south-facing wall indirect sunlight for most of the day. This illustrates quite

vividly how an attempt to save or render permanent amemorial can go seriously awry. Baked by the sun, the col-orants had faded, the pictures became ghostly images,cellophane adhesives had failed, paper was torn, curled, orlying loose at the bottom of the encasement. Humiditybecame trapped under the protective layer, fostering mas-sive mold growth that has discolored and structurallydamaged and weakened the paper.

Even vandalism has been a factor in rendering imper-manent this attempt at permanence (figs. 5–6).Newspapers dated long after September 11, 2001, hadbeen found stuffed behind the protective Plexiglas cover-ing, tearing the fragile paper behind. Stickers and scratchedgraffiti on the face of the plastic obliterated the images itencased. The hospital could not remove this collage ofmaterials and bring it inside, as it was part of the hospital’sexterior wall. Ironically, the manner in which the hospitalchose to conserve the memorial outside encouraged itsdeterioration.

In an article in the New York Times, Haberman (2006)reported that the wall was finally dismantled in 2006 aftera winter storm ripped apart the Plexiglas covering. Thewall was never intended to be a permanent memorial.“The permanence of it came later on, when we realized ithad great significance to people,” Sister Kevin noted. Thehospital claims a new wall will be constructed, better pro-tected from the elements, using copies of the originalartifacts.

The Bellevue Hospital Wall of Prayer, another sponta-neous outdoor memorial in New York City, was a plywoodconstruction fence consisting of forty four-foot-by-eight-foot sheets of painted plywood that also became coveredwith the iconic materials of the post-September 11 reac-tion. After two months outdoors, the wall was dismantledand collected by the Museum of the City of New Yo r k .Eighteen plywood panels have now been conserved by theNortheast Document Conservation Center, under thedirection of Walter Newman, director of paper conserva-tion.

The conservation of this artifact resulted in a completedisassembling and reassembling of the various layers ofpapers, tapes, yarn, and other materials posted on the wall.Tapes of every sort, such as electrical, duct, packing, paper,cloth, various cellophane and plastic tapes, all had to havetheir corrosive adhesive coatings removed. Papers all hadto be removed, cleaned, flattened, and tacked to Mylarsheets cut to individual sizes as a barrier protection fromthe wood.

Individual sheets of paper, which had been encapsulat-ed by homemade methods and were too moldy to bereassembled, had to have digital replicas made. Tapes alsohad to be backed by protective Mylar before beingreassembled onto the panels. In the spring of 2007, WalterNewman’s paper describing the Document Center’s con-


servation efforts will be published by the Institute of Pa p e rConservation.

The Wall of Prayer will never be exhibited in its origi-nal form because of its massive size. Parts of it will beexhibited indoors; however, it will never be seen in itst o t a l i t y. Since the fence is now in institutional care withplans to use it as an exhibit, it could be considered to be apermanent, but out-of-context, memorial. The conserva-tors and museum collectors on this project had to walk afine line between careful conservation techniques, aimedat preserving a memorial for future generations, and thevisceral, authentic narrative provided by the original dirt,stains, and rips.

At other locales in New York City, such as St. Pa u l ’ sChapel and Trinity Church, spontaneous shrines were cre-ated on buildings’ exterior wrought-iron fences. Most ofthe items, where possible, were individually collected. Butonly some of the items could be kept, not perishables likefood and most flowers and plants. As a result, you cannot

Fig. 5. The Wall of Hope and Remembrance, St. Vincent’sHospital, 2003.

Fig. 6. Detail from the Wall of Hope and Remembrance, 2003.

suzymorgan

Placed Image

suzymorgan

Placed Image

reconstruct anything like the original spontaneous shrinewith the juxtaposition of materials and the compositionalwhole that made it so powerful. Only parts of the wholemay be saved and made permanent.

After the September 11 attacks, Union Square Park inNew York City became one vast memorial site and hap-pening. Masses of people came there to participate incollective grieving and mourning. After two weeks, theimpromptu memorial was removed by the New York CityParks Department. The New York City MunicipalArchives has archived some of the materials collected.Floral and botanical matter has been disposed of, as havecandles and other perishables. The remaining materials,p a p e r, posters, and small sculptures, have been archivedout of the context of their original placement.

Numerous firehouses and police precincts in New Yo r kCity have their own vernacular memorials. In an interviewin 2005 Paula Schrynemakers, a conservator who hasworked on conserving some of these memorials, said thatlack of money for conservation supplies, the memorials’environmentally unfriendly location, and the sheer size ofsome of these memorials create tremendous obstacles andimpediments to conservation. Most conservation is doneon-site, in situ.

As written about by Collins (2006), the installation ofElegy in Dust: Sept. 11th and the Chelsea Jeans Memorial atthe New-York Historical Society presented unique conser-vation and installation problems. The exhibition presentsthe contents of a storefront located a block away from theformer World Trade Center. The storefront of jeans,sweaters, and other apparel was covered in the toxic dust,ash, and debris of the fallen towers. Originally encased byglass by the store’s owner, David Cohen, the site quicklybecame a vernacular shrine and “a place of pilgrimage forthousands of tourists, mourners, and recovery workers inthe year after the attack” (Collins 2006). This memorialremained at 196 Broadway for a year until October 2002,when the contents were transferred to the New-Yo r kHistorical Society.

Because this toxic dust might contain the remains ofthose lost and missing in the towers attack, the artifactsmust be treated with the utmost reverence and respect. “Itis always dangerous to disturb toxic dust, but this dust ishistoric, and possibly sacred” (Collins 2006). Senior con-servator Alan Balicki notes about the artifacts, “Here I am,trying to preserve what I normally clean off…. It’s strangeto be so carefully preserving something that is so destruc-tive.”

The handling of these challenging relics forced themuseum personnel to work inside a temporary tent ofpolyethylene to shield the rest of the museum space fromthe carcinogenic dust and toxins. To protect themselves,they had to wear hazard suits and respirators with com-


pound filters. The suits were specially made of Tyvek toreduce static electricity that would disturb the dust.

Whereas the Oklahoma City National Memorial usedartificial dust to depict the aftermath of the bombing, thisNew York exhibit may be the first time that the actual toxicdust has been used in a museum setting. The exhibitioncase itself had to be specially constructed to provide a com-pletely reliable seal. The actual toxicity of the dust is stillunknown. The dust’s potential corrosive effect on theapparel’s fabric is also unknown; however to date it appearsnot have caused deterioration.

T H E I M PAC T O F V E R N AC U L A R M E M O R I A L A RT

O N C I V I C L I F E

The plethora of vernacular memorials that arosethroughout New York City and the surrounding region inthe aftermath of the September 11 attack have generatedthe greatest number of examples of civic issues related tothis phenomenon.

How does the public planning process intersect withfamilies’ private grief? Should spontaneous memorials beallowed to permanently encroach on sidewalks and otherpublic spaces? If the site is in the middle of a city, how canthe city resume its necessary activities without destroyingthe memorial? Should memorials be removed for safetyreasons (as in the case of roadside memorials that can dis-tract drivers)?

I n i t i a l l y, spontaneous memorials were celebrated or tol-erated by the neighborhood and public but, as time andenvironmental degradation weathered the appearance ofthese memorials, public opinion changed and tolerancewaned. On the other hand, as reported by Wilson (2002aand 2002b) in the New York Ti m e s, the dismantling of someof these memorials also caused dissent.

As reported by Iovine (2003), the number of officialmemorials in downtown Manhattan — to commemoratenot only September 11 but the Irish Potato Famine and theAfrican Burial Ground, the Museum of Jewish Heritage (aHolocaust memorial), and numerous others — caused thecolumnist Jimmy Breslin to dub this area “Misery Mile”(in contrast to Manhattan’s famous “Museum Mile”uptown). There were also reports (Saulny 2003) of a largetheft of mementos from a spontaneous memorial next tothe State Supreme Court building that was being cared forby one of the court officers.

The simple existence of these sites and memorials caus-es controversy. Governments and the broader public seethem in terms of historic locales, but the needs of the liv-ing, economics, and land use can be at odds with the stigmaof residing in a cemetery. These public locales have become“sites of hurtful memory,” as named by Dolf-Bonekamper(2002), since they can cause a tremendous amount of emo-tional pain for victims’ families. Divergent points of view

collide, yet the urge to create memorials to loved ones per-sists, regardless of time, location, or medium.

C O N C LU S I O N

This research has demonstrated that American vernac-ular memorial art represents a new kind of art collectionthat is significantly impacting museums and citizens. Itpresents unique and significant problems in terms of theircollection, conservation, and exhibition. It also creates reli-gious, moral, philosophical, and ethical issues.

These issues will not fade away but will likely increase.Once the memorial and museum are completed at theWorld Trade Center site, the public will, in all likelihood,interact with these as they have with the Vietnam Ve t e r a n sand Oklahoma City memorials, for years on end. Therewill be a new, living, evolving, spontaneous collection ofmaterials to be dealt with.

We need to develop conservation techniques appropri-ate to these massive collections of diverse, ephemeralmaterials. The conservation community has to form somecohesive, unified approaches to the preservation of thesematerials. We need to properly position vernacular memo-rial artifacts in the narrative of American art history. Weneed to maintain a dialogue and suggest policies andguidelines to help the diverse institutions, groups, andindividual conservators who are struggling to care for theseimportant, meaningful, and historic artifacts.

AC K N O W L E D G M E N T S

I would like to thank the following for letting me inter-view them for this research:Alan Balicki, Senior Conservator, New-York Historical

SocietyBarbara Black, Curator, Somerset Historical CenterEllin Burke, Collections Manager, Museum of the City of

New YorkPatricia Clayborough, Texas A&M University, College

StationD r. Sylvia Grider, Principal Investigator of the Bonfire

Memorabilia Collection Project, Dept. ofAnthropology, Texas A&M University

R e v. Alphonse Mascherino, Director- C u r a t o r, UAL Flight93 Memorial Chapel

Laura McCann, Deputy Director, New York CityMunicipal Archives

Walter Newman, Director of Paper Conservation,Northeast Document Conservation Center

Janice Seline, Management Consultant for Exhibitions,Oklahoma City Museum of Art

Jane Thomas, Collections Manager, Oklahoma CityNational Memorial


Paula Schrynemakers, Library & Archives Conservation,New York City

D r. C. Wayne Smith, Director of Archeology Pr e s e r v a t i o nResearch Laboratory, Texas A&M University

Helen Smith, Texas A&M UniversityRoxanne Sullivan, Assistant Curator, Somerset Historical

Center.

I’d also like to thank those who responded to the surveys:Cynthia Amneus, Assoc. Curator of Costumes & Textiles,

Cincinnati Art MuseumLarry Baxter, Board Secretary, The NAMES Pr o j e c t

Canada, Halifax, Nova ScotiaBarbara Black, Curator, Somerset Historical Center,

Somerset, PAEllin Burke, Collections Manager, Museum of the City of

New YorkMeghan Dougherty, Graduate Assistant, University of

Washington, SeattleAvery Garner, Chair, Northeast Florida Chapter, the

National NAMES Project Foundation, Jacksonville,Florida

D r. Sylvia Grider, Principal Investigator of the BonfireMemorabilia Collection Project, Dept. ofAnthropology, Texas A&M University

Barbara Martinez, President, Foundation MAROZO,Caracas, Venezuela

R e v. Alphonse Mascherino, Director- C u r a t o r, UAL Flight93 Memorial Chapel

Deb Robertson, shanksvillememorial.comJames Safley, Digital Archives Specialist, George Mason

UniversityJanice Seline, Management Consultant for Exhibitions,

Oklahoma City Museum of ArtJane Thomas, Collections Manager, Oklahoma City

National MemorialAkiko Yamazaki-Kleps, Paper Conservator, Metropolitan

Museum of Art

And additional thanks to my mentors and those whohelped me in my research: Dr. Hugh Crean, StevenDworkin, Evelyn Graves, Natalie Giugni, Olga Marder,Michael Rosenthal, Mark Sandy, and Dr. Marsha Wallace.

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L AUREN A. FA R B E R

Paper Conservator Doctoral Candidate, University of the Arts LondonCamberwell College of ArtLondon, [email protected]

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