About this item
Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11 traces the evolution and consequences of a new hybrid paradigm, which grants a heroic status to victims of national tragedies, and by extension to their families, thereby creating a class of privileged participants in the permanent memorial process. Harriet F. Senie suggests that instead the victims' families be able to determine the nature of an interim memorial, one that addresses their needs in the critical time between the murder of their loved ones and the completion of the permanent memorial. She also observes that the memorials discussed herein are inadvertently based on strategies of diversion and denial that direct our attention away from actual events, and reframe tragedy as secular or religious triumph.
About the Author
Professor Harriet F. Senie's chief areas of research are public art, memorials, memory and material culture, the American landscape tradition (specifically, themes of the road in American art and culture) , and contemporary pilgrimage practice. She is Professor of Art History and Director of the M.A. program in Art History and Art Museum Studies Program at City College of New York. In Fall 2000 Prof. Senie was appointed Visiting Distinguished Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She previously served as Associate Director of the Princeton Art Museum and Gallery Director at SUNY, Old Westbury. In 2008, with Professor Cher Krause Knight, she co-founded Public Art Dialogue, an international organization that is also a College Art Association (CAA) affiliate. The journal, Public Art Dialogue, that she co-edits with Prof. Knight, has appeared twice annually since 2011 and is the only peer review publication devoted to public art.
