Remembering the blue of the 9/11 sky through art, lights, Instagram

Peter D. Kramer, Rockland/Westchester Journal News
Updated ·2 min read
Spencer Finch's art installation “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning” dominates a wall in the 9/11 Memorial Museum in Manhattan. In trying to capture the blue of that sky, it comprises 2,983 individual watercolors.
Spencer Finch's art installation “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning” dominates a wall in the 9/11 Memorial Museum in Manhattan. In trying to capture the blue of that sky, it comprises 2,983 individual watercolors.

Blue.

Out of the impossibly blue sky, the unthinkable came.

A generation has grown up since the events of Sept. 11, 2001 — 22 Septembers ago — but those who can cast their mind back to that day remember one thing: the bluest sky, the perfect post-summer day.

We’ve built memorials across the northern suburbs, at the Pentagon, in a Pennsylvania field.

We’ve taken touristing friends to visit the spot where twin towers once stood, where what remains are their waterfalled footprints ringed by the names of those we lost.

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Blue, yes. But what shade of blue?

The artist Spencer Finch tried to capture it in a massive installation at the 9/11 Memorial Museum titled: “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning.” It’s one massive piece of art, but it is 2,983 individual watercolors, each its own particular shade of blue.

Look at it and squint and you'll get the idea of the blue of that morning.

The number of watercolors is intentional: 2,983 lives were lost on 9/11 and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Each piece of paper is individually painted and placed, representing a life lost to violence out of the blue.

Spencer Finch's art installation “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning” dominates a wall in the 9/11 Memorial Museum in Manhattan. In trying to capture the blue of that sky, it comprises 2,983 individual watercolors.
Spencer Finch's art installation “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning” dominates a wall in the 9/11 Memorial Museum in Manhattan. In trying to capture the blue of that sky, it comprises 2,983 individual watercolors.

The watercolors surround another intentional bit of remembrance, a quote from the Roman poet Virgil fashioned from World Trade Center steel by artist Tom Joyce: “No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory Of Time.”

Remember the sky

Each year, the anniversary prompts us to pause, to reflect, to remember. Names are read. Bells are tolled. Tears are shed. What else can we do?

Each year, the staff at the 9/11 Memorial Museum asks people to point their smartphone cameras skyward, to “Remember the Sky” of that day by posting a photo of the sky above them on September 11, this September 11. The idea is to show — when the photos are posted on Instagram with the hashtags #neverforget911 and #rememberthesky — that we're all connected underneath the same sky.

The annual Tribute in Lights in lower Manhattan as seen from under the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn Sept. 11, 2021.
The annual Tribute in Lights in lower Manhattan as seen from under the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn Sept. 11, 2021.

Tribute in Lights

When the sky turns dark this September 11, that darkest day is recalled in another way, in twin beams of light stretching 4 miles into the sky, visible from 60 miles away.

“Tribute in Light” echoes those fallen towers, like phantom limbs lost a generation ago. The towers rise, thanks to 88 xenon lightbulbs, 7,000 watts each.

They rise higher than their steel-and-glass forebears.

In a magnificent shade of ...

Blue.

Reach Peter D. Kramer at pkramer@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: 9/11 art installation asks us to 'remember the color of the sky'