Tribute in Light
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The Tribute in Light was a temporary art installation of 88 searchlights placed next to the site of the World Trade Center from March 11 to April 14, 2002 to create two vertical columns of light in remembrance of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack. The tribute was launched again on 2003, to mark the second anniversary of the attack, and is done every year since on September 11, to mark the anniversary.
The various people who ended up working together on the project simultaneously came up with the idea in the week following the attack.
Architects John Bennett and Gustavo Bonevardi of PROUN Space Studio distributed their "Project for the Immediate Reconstruction of Manhattan's Skyline".
Artists Julian LaVerdiere and Paul Myoda, who before September 11 were working on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center north tower on a proposed light scupture on the giant radio antenna with Creative Time, conceived the project "Phantom Towers", and were commissioned by The New York Times Magazine an image of the project for its September 23 cover.
Richard Nash Gould, a New York architect, went to the Municipal Art Society with the concept. Gould, a March 1972 graduate of Yale, was part of a firm whose SoHo office looked on the World Trade Center. Other projects by Gould include Howard, Darby & Levin in New York City and Polo Sport, Ralph Lauren in New York City.
On September 19, chairman Philip K. Howard wrote to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, asking him "to consider placing two large searchlights near the disaster site, projecting their light straight up into the sky."
The project was originally going to be named Towers of Light until some people complained that emphasized the building destroyed instead of the people killed.
External links
- Photographs of the tribute (http://www.jgrussell.com/g2_3.htm)
- For, Now, How About A Monument of Light? (http://www.creativetime.org/towers/monument.html), New York Post, September 20, 2001
- Tribute in Light (http://www.creativetime.org/towers/main.html)
- From 88 Searchlights, an Ethereal Tribute (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/04/nyregion/04LIGH.html), The New York Times, March 4, 2002
- Filling the Void (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/23/magazine/23MYODA.html), The New York Times Magazine, September 23, 2001
- Richard Nash Gould's company site (http://www.rngarchitects.com/)