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September 11 archive

The Healing Power of Art:
Memorial Art Gallery to Offer Free Admission Days

In response to the tragic events of September 11, the Memorial Art Gallery will be open free of charge on six Tuesdays beginning September 25. Instead of admission, the gallery will collect voluntary contributions to the September 11th Fund, a joint venture of the United Way and the New York Community Trust.

On all six free days—September 25, October 2, October 9, October 16, October 23 and October 30—the gallery will be open during its regular hours from noon to 9 p.m., with free noontime programs. The first of these programs, on September 25, will feature a performance by soprano Colleen Liggett and a poetry reading by gallery director Grant Holcomb.

"At this most difficult time," says Holcomb, "we wanted to offer the gallery as a community site for reflection and comfort."

For those who feel that the arts have no place in a world beset by hostilities, Holcomb cites American writer Katharine Anne Porter, who wrote in 1940: "In the face of . . . present misfortune, the voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the grass, but the arts . . . outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. . . . They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away."

In New York City, museums reported a surge in attendance in the days following the attacks. "People who haven't had the heart yet to go back to work have been coming here for a sense of serenity and the intercession of other people," said Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum, in a September 17 New York Times article. "Hospitals are open. They're around to fix the body. We're here to fix the soul."

Free gallery admission Tuesdays from 5 to 9 is made possible in part by the Democrat and Chronicle/Gannett Foundation and FleetBoston Financial Foundation with additional support from Monroe County.

September 20, 2001