Spencer Finch 9/11 Commission

16 May 2014

The National September 11 Memorial Museum, opening on 21 May 2014, will serve as the country’s principal institution for examining the implications of the events of 9/11, documenting the impact of those events and exploring the continuing significance of September 11, 2001. In addition to the museum's displays, archives and artefacts, the artist Spencer Finch was commissioned to create a new work commemorating the loss of 2,983 people that day in New York and in 1993, in the bombing of the World Trade Center. Finch’s work, Trying To Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning, is an installation of 2,983 watercolours, each painted in a differing shade of blue and mounted together on a wire grid. In an interview, the artist told the New York Times: “I don’t know if it’s going to be successful. But I feel that if I just do it in an honest way and work hard, maybe it will be. As an artist, I don’t feel like my motives are always pure. But I feel that they’re pretty pure here. I’m a New Yorker, and I was here that day.”