Embracing the fragments left behind

In commemoration of the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s latest exhibit showcases items recovered from ground zero.

Penn Museum Associate Director of Education Jean Byrne hopes students will find a place to reflect and share stories this Sunday at the exhibit, “Excavating Ground Zero: Fragments of 9/11,” which opened August 20.

“I was very moved – as we all were – by the event,” she said. Byrne contacted the September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York ahead of the 10th anniversary in the hopes of borrowing a piece.

Instead, she was loaned fifteen artifacts ranging from notecards and signs to shards of glass from the Twin Towers.

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The Museum in New York has loaned out pieces to several museums across the world until its own opening in 2012. Although the pieces represent so much tragedy, they are “also incredibly uplifting because out of this tragedy have come so many stories of heroism and compassion,” Byrne said.

Byrne wanted the exhibit — which will remain open until November 6 — to be a place where people could come and reflect. “It definitely memorializes [and is] an opportunity for our community to come together and reflect… on this event that changed our culture… forever.”

The exhibit is housed in a single room in the third floor galleries that occupy the west side of the museum. Kate Quinn, director of exhibitions at the Penn Museum, brought the images from the day into the gallery.

The walls are a pale gray that evokes the smoke that Quinn associates with 9/11. The black-and-white information boards on the wall relay the numbers: those lost and the timeline of events. The entire exhibit, from the twin glass displays in the center to the artistic pieces along the wall recall the dual image of the World Trade Center. A slideshow silently progresses through images of firefighters and smoke. Reprinted January and February editions of the Penn Gazette contain the obituaries of the 16 Penn alumni who lost their lives.

For Quinn, each piece is powerful. Two central display cases feature Christmas ornaments and dictionary pages that survived the wreckage. A keyboard along the back wall is mutilated beyond comprehension.

A single pair of wire-frame glasses are quietly somber. The power lies partly in the recognizability of the objects, Quinn said. Every time she looks at the melted computer parts, she cannot help but wonder about the anonymous user and what he was doing when the planes hit.

“I heard everything on the radio [while at work but] didn’t actually get to see … the visuals of the day [so] it was something that I was making up in my head,” Quinn said. And from her hours trapped at work – and the later images that bombarded her over the evening time news – Quinn was inspired to curate the exhibit from the loaned pieces.

On the far wall, an interactive display invites people to share their memories. Each story beginning with “I remember…”

Quinn remembers painting scenery at her job that morning ten years ago, when a co-worker asked her to turn up the radio. Byrne remembers the nightmares that kept her now-college aged children awake.

“I started talking about [the exhibit] with other people,” Quinn said. “Everyone shared their experience of the day. They wanted to tell you where they were and what happened to them that day.”

This Sunday, admission to the Penn Museum is not fixed and entrants are encouraged to pay what they wish.

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