September 23, 2001, The Mail on Sunday (London) "Legal nightmare over terror bills; Vital insurance deals on twin towers were incomplete," by Lisa Buckingham,
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-78533958.html
CRUCIAL paperwork for insuring the World Trade Centre had not been completed when terrorists attacked, Financial Mail discloses today.
Cover for the twin towers was being arranged by Willis Group, the world's third largest insurance broker, say senior insurance sources.
But now it has emerged that policy wordings had not been finalised by the time the twin towers were destroyed. A huge raft of lawsuits seems inevitable as insurers wrangle over who should pick up the [pound] 2.5 billion bill for buildings and third party liability cover, shared by 20 insurers.
The lives of workers in the towers were covered by separate policies.
Estimates of the total claims in the wake of the tragedy - for loss of life and interruption of business as well as physical devastation - have risen towards [pound] 50 billion.
The cost is believed to include the value of one of the world's most precious art collections, held on the 105th floor and belonging to broker Cantor Fitzgerald. It included sculptures and drawings by Rodin.
A spokesman for Willis in New Jersey declined to comment. But any ambiguity in policy wordings could allow insurers to dispute their liabilities. They could take legal action against one another. Or they could try to force Willis to foot some of the bill, which in turn might mean Willis claiming against its own insurers who cover the cost of the broker making a mistake.
Willis, one of the oldest insurance brokers in the world whose UK headquarters are in the historic Trinity House building opposite the Tower of London, was floated on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year.
Three years earlier, it had been bought out with backing from Wall Street financiers KKR.
Meanwhile, the influential Business Insurance magazine has calculated that the Lloyd's of London will have to meet nearly a fifth of property insurance losses on the World Trade Centre - far higher than previously thought.
Analysts at US investment bank Morgan Stanley last week drew up a confidential report suggesting that Lloyd's could be in deep trouble in the wake of the US attacks.
Lloyd's dismissed the report as 'alarmist'. A spokeswoman said Lloyd's has [pound] 18 billion of immediately available capital to pay claims. The market's regulator had checked individual solvency levels to ensure that investors could meet their bills, she added.
Lloyd's has not issued an estimate of what it expects to pay. But insiders say the scale of likely claims is well above levels suggested immediately after the atrocities. Swiss Re and Munich Re last week doubled previous estimates of their exposure.
Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company run by American investor Warren Buffett, said it now expects to have to pay $2.2 billion.
Many Lloyd's Names - individuals who back the market for more than [pound] 1 million and who could face a cash call of more than [pound] 100,000 a head as a direct result of the World Trade Centre claims - are thought to be planning to increase their exposure to the market.
Michael Deeny, chairman of the Association of Lloyd's Members, said: 'I will increase my underwriting and I know plenty of people who are thinking of doing the same.' The Names are convinced that insurance premiums will soar as the full impact of the world's largest insurance claim is felt in the global underwriting system.
Buckingham, Lisa. "Legal nightmare over terror bills; Vital insurance deals on twin towers were incomplete." The Mail on Sunday (London, England). 2001. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-78533958.html
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
"The Victims; Trade Center bond firm is hit hard; 700 workers perished in Cantor's lofty headquarters," by Greg Gordon,
September 15, 2001, Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), "The Victims; Trade Center bond firm is hit hard; 700 workers perished in Cantor's lofty headquarters," by Greg Gordon, Staff Writer,
The bond traders at Cantor Fitzgerald, LP, were proud of their innovations, of their influence in moving billions of dollars in U.S. Treasury securities each year and of their perch atop the gleaming, 110-story World Trade Center.
In the north tower, where the firm had offices between the 101st and 105th floors, only the restaurant Windows on the World stood higher. The company's late founder, Bernard Cantor, for years boasted of having the world's highest museum, exhibiting some of his collection of Rodin sculptures outside his 105th-floor office, including a copy of "The Thinker."
The setting, said Mike McManus, who worked at Cantor for 10 years, "was magnificent ... There were days when the cloud cover was actually below you. There would be an overcast day in New York, but working at Cantor...[you] had sun streaming through the windows. It was like you were on top of the world."
But in less than an hour Tuesday, Cantor's lofty headquarters operation perished. And absent a miracle in the search for survivors, so did about 700 company employees - one of the most staggering losses to a single firm from the terrorist attack that imploded both towers and killed thousands.
About 300 headquarters employees survived because they were absent by chance. Christopher Pepe, an employee of Cantor's eSpeed division, left the building minutes before the impact to go to Starbucks because he did not want to drink the office's "garbage coffee," McManus said. And chief executive officer Howard Lutnick got to work late because he had taken his son to his first day of kindergarten.
Each day since the attack, employees, friends and family members have gathered at the Pierre Hotel off Central Park to console each other, some clinging to hope, others beginning to grieve. In a closely guarded meeting area, they have mounted pictures of the missing employees on a wall in a giant collage, had sessions with counselors and cried together.
On Friday, Richard Murach was in tears as he stood outside the hotel and contemplated the loss of his 45-year-old brother, Robert- a husband, father of two young children and the senior vice president of Cantor's prestigious treasury department.
"He was a great guy. He turned lemons into lemonade...so talented and humble, a brilliant guy," he said. "But his death is no bigger than [that of] the hot-dog vendor on the ground. Everybody's death is important."
He said family members are "looking for closure...When we feel that we're over it, we start crying again and it makes you feel better. And then there's some hope, and you hold hands and you hug and you talk about it. And then you feel worse. It's a roller coaster that's going to go on for the rest of our lives."
Not since 8:50 a.m. Tuesday, two minutes after terrorists slammed a hijacked jetliner into the north tower 15 floors below, has anyone heard from the traders, executives and support personnel who were in Cantor's offices. With smoke pouring in from below, numerous Cantor employees spent those two minutes frantically phoning family members to say goodbye and "I love you," said McManus and other friends.
Fran LaForte, who is eight months pregnant, told friends that she dropped her kids off at school and returned to her suburban New Jersey home Tuesday morning to a taped farewell message from her husband, Michael. Lutnick told ABC News that his brother, Gary, made a similar call to their sister.
"He was stuck in a corner office," Lutnick said, describing his brother's message. "There was no way out. And the smoke was coming in and it is - it's not good, and...he's not going to make it. And he just wanted to say that he loved her and wanted to say goodbye...And then the phone went - the phone went dead," he said.
Lutnick said he arrived to find the building on fire and stood at the bottom, frantically questioning fleeing occupants as to what floor they had come from. The highest he heard was the 91st. Lutnick said that when the second plane hit, people began screaming and he turned and ran, but was knocked to the ground amid smoke and debris. After the buildings collapsed, he told ABC, he "just walked north" for hours.
Richard Murach said he has since learned that his brother was on the phone with his counterpart in London when the plane hit. "He knew something had happened. Then the phones went dead."
"We don't know...if it went quick, if it was a fireball, if they had time to pray," he said. But even if the stairwell wasn't cut off by the crash, he said, "My brother, the type of guy he was, he would have hung around and helped somebody who needed help getting out."
McManus and another former employee, though, said Cantor's employees had little chance of survival even if the stairwell was accessible, given that the building collapsed within an hour.
When a terrorist bomb went off in the building's basement in 1993, McManus said, the stairs were so crowded that it took him two hours and five minutes to get down 105 floors. "It was a step at a time," he said.
Gary Ekelund, a former Cantor employee who works with McManus at a competing firm, said it took him 3 1/2 hours to get out in 1993. "The building [was] a death trap. Always has been," he said.
Ekelund, ironically, may owe his life to Cantor's innovation. When the firm shifted from voice trading to electronic trading in recent years, it reduced its Treasury securities trading staff from 500 to 40. Ekelund was among those laid off.
Cantor Fitzgerald, which had backup systems at offices in London and New Jersey, managed to resume trading Thursday and Lutnick vowed that "we will not allow this tragedy to sway us from our path. While we grieve, we intend to persevere."
But he also declared in TV interviews that he now has 700 families to take care of, and he initiated a donation program for the victims' families with a $1 million personal contribution.
- Greg Gordon is at ggordon@mcclatchydc.com.
Gordon, Greg. "THE VICTIMS; Trade Center bond firm is hit hard; 700 workers perished in Cantor's lofty headquarters.(NEWS)(SPECIAL REPORT: AFTER THE ATTACK)." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN). 2001. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-78352738.html
The bond traders at Cantor Fitzgerald, LP, were proud of their innovations, of their influence in moving billions of dollars in U.S. Treasury securities each year and of their perch atop the gleaming, 110-story World Trade Center.
In the north tower, where the firm had offices between the 101st and 105th floors, only the restaurant Windows on the World stood higher. The company's late founder, Bernard Cantor, for years boasted of having the world's highest museum, exhibiting some of his collection of Rodin sculptures outside his 105th-floor office, including a copy of "The Thinker."
The setting, said Mike McManus, who worked at Cantor for 10 years, "was magnificent ... There were days when the cloud cover was actually below you. There would be an overcast day in New York, but working at Cantor...[you] had sun streaming through the windows. It was like you were on top of the world."
But in less than an hour Tuesday, Cantor's lofty headquarters operation perished. And absent a miracle in the search for survivors, so did about 700 company employees - one of the most staggering losses to a single firm from the terrorist attack that imploded both towers and killed thousands.
About 300 headquarters employees survived because they were absent by chance. Christopher Pepe, an employee of Cantor's eSpeed division, left the building minutes before the impact to go to Starbucks because he did not want to drink the office's "garbage coffee," McManus said. And chief executive officer Howard Lutnick got to work late because he had taken his son to his first day of kindergarten.
Each day since the attack, employees, friends and family members have gathered at the Pierre Hotel off Central Park to console each other, some clinging to hope, others beginning to grieve. In a closely guarded meeting area, they have mounted pictures of the missing employees on a wall in a giant collage, had sessions with counselors and cried together.
On Friday, Richard Murach was in tears as he stood outside the hotel and contemplated the loss of his 45-year-old brother, Robert- a husband, father of two young children and the senior vice president of Cantor's prestigious treasury department.
"He was a great guy. He turned lemons into lemonade...so talented and humble, a brilliant guy," he said. "But his death is no bigger than [that of] the hot-dog vendor on the ground. Everybody's death is important."
He said family members are "looking for closure...When we feel that we're over it, we start crying again and it makes you feel better. And then there's some hope, and you hold hands and you hug and you talk about it. And then you feel worse. It's a roller coaster that's going to go on for the rest of our lives."
Not since 8:50 a.m. Tuesday, two minutes after terrorists slammed a hijacked jetliner into the north tower 15 floors below, has anyone heard from the traders, executives and support personnel who were in Cantor's offices. With smoke pouring in from below, numerous Cantor employees spent those two minutes frantically phoning family members to say goodbye and "I love you," said McManus and other friends.
Fran LaForte, who is eight months pregnant, told friends that she dropped her kids off at school and returned to her suburban New Jersey home Tuesday morning to a taped farewell message from her husband, Michael. Lutnick told ABC News that his brother, Gary, made a similar call to their sister.
"He was stuck in a corner office," Lutnick said, describing his brother's message. "There was no way out. And the smoke was coming in and it is - it's not good, and...he's not going to make it. And he just wanted to say that he loved her and wanted to say goodbye...And then the phone went - the phone went dead," he said.
Lutnick said he arrived to find the building on fire and stood at the bottom, frantically questioning fleeing occupants as to what floor they had come from. The highest he heard was the 91st. Lutnick said that when the second plane hit, people began screaming and he turned and ran, but was knocked to the ground amid smoke and debris. After the buildings collapsed, he told ABC, he "just walked north" for hours.
Richard Murach said he has since learned that his brother was on the phone with his counterpart in London when the plane hit. "He knew something had happened. Then the phones went dead."
"We don't know...if it went quick, if it was a fireball, if they had time to pray," he said. But even if the stairwell wasn't cut off by the crash, he said, "My brother, the type of guy he was, he would have hung around and helped somebody who needed help getting out."
McManus and another former employee, though, said Cantor's employees had little chance of survival even if the stairwell was accessible, given that the building collapsed within an hour.
When a terrorist bomb went off in the building's basement in 1993, McManus said, the stairs were so crowded that it took him two hours and five minutes to get down 105 floors. "It was a step at a time," he said.
Gary Ekelund, a former Cantor employee who works with McManus at a competing firm, said it took him 3 1/2 hours to get out in 1993. "The building [was] a death trap. Always has been," he said.
Ekelund, ironically, may owe his life to Cantor's innovation. When the firm shifted from voice trading to electronic trading in recent years, it reduced its Treasury securities trading staff from 500 to 40. Ekelund was among those laid off.
Cantor Fitzgerald, which had backup systems at offices in London and New Jersey, managed to resume trading Thursday and Lutnick vowed that "we will not allow this tragedy to sway us from our path. While we grieve, we intend to persevere."
But he also declared in TV interviews that he now has 700 families to take care of, and he initiated a donation program for the victims' families with a $1 million personal contribution.
- Greg Gordon is at ggordon@mcclatchydc.com.
Gordon, Greg. "THE VICTIMS; Trade Center bond firm is hit hard; 700 workers perished in Cantor's lofty headquarters.(NEWS)(SPECIAL REPORT: AFTER THE ATTACK)." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN). 2001. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-78352738.html
"A place open to beauty: Rodin sculpture trove anchors North Carolina Museum of Arts new building," by Andrea Weigl,
April 25, 2010, Sunday Gazette-Mail , "A place open to beauty: Rodin sculpture trove anchors North Carolina Museum of Arts new building," by Andrea Weigl,
RALEIGH, N.C. - On a Sunday afternoon six years ago, Larry Wheeler, director of the North Carolina Museum of Art, pulled out his Crane stationery and wrote what might be the most important letter of his career: It was to Iris Cantor, owner of the largest private collection of Auguste Rodin works in the world.
Wheeler had cultivated Cantor's friendship since the late 1990s when they worked together on the Raleigh museum's record-breaking Rodin exhibition. In the years since, Wheeler had noticed Cantor focusing more on health-care philanthropy than the Rodin collection.
"You know I'm sympathetic," he recalls writing her. "You have a lot of responsibilities, a lot of demands. Maybe it's time to divest yourself of the Rodin collection." He brazenly asked that the bulk of the collection come to the North Carolina museum.
"He was eloquent," Cantor said in a recent interview. "He was persistent. Ultimately, he was successful."
The payoff was on display Saturday, when the museum opened its new 127,000-square-foot building after about a dozen years of planning and three years of construction. The 29 Rodin sculptures not only made the state art museum one of the largest repositories of the bronze castings in the country, it also helped push through funding for the expansion, triggered many other gifts of art and helped raise $30 million of the museum's continuing goal to reach $50 million in private contributions.
The result is an art collection in a new galleries building whose architecture is drawing national attention.
"North Carolina is going to be on the map now in a big way," said Reed Kroloff, director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum in Michigan, who has helped organize architect searches for museums. He added that the new building "is going to be heavily lionized in the architectural press by a highly respected New York-based architect who has done one beautiful building after another after another."
The story of how North Carolina became the beneficiary of all these riches despite a depressed economy began a little more than a decade ago, when a modest exhibition of Cantor's Rodins was touring the country. Wheeler, who became director of the museum in 1994, insisted the exhibition that would come to his museum have a far grander display.
So in the late 1990s, the always dapper Wheeler, with short silver hair framed by thick, black glasses, found himself nervous, sitting in the library of a Park Avenue apartment, surrounded by Rodin works and waiting to speak to Iris Cantor.
Gerald Cantor, who started the worldwide securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald, began collecting Rodin and other works in 1946. Through the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, they have given Rodins and other works to more than 70 museums and other institutions. After her husband died in 1996, Iris Cantor continued the gifts and supplied sculpture for exhibitions around the country.
It has been said that the Cantors made Rodin popular in the United States. After his death in 1917, Rodin's work had fallen out of favor as old-fashioned and sentimental at a time when abstract styles were emerging. Now his works like "The Thinker" are among the most recognizable in all of art, and he is praised for his ability to capture human emotion in bronze.
On that day when Cantor joined Wheeler in the library, he recalled her asking: "What can I do to help you?"
Wheeler launched into his spiel: To put on a more comprehensive Rodin exhibition than had previously been done, he needed loans from her private collection - he brought a list - and her assistance to get other museums to lend pieces she had donated. He explained that Stanford University had turned down his request for a loan of "The Thinker," the artist's most recognizable work.
"Well you know, I own 95 percent of that piece," Wheeler recalled Cantor saying. "I will just tell them to lend it."
With that, Wheeler says, Cantor became an advocate for gathering art for the Raleigh show in 2000.
He invited her to the opening. At first she refused, saying she never goes to those events. But she came, spending the whole weekend in the area. In her gown and jewels at the gala, she was a diva on the dance floor. "She left just enamored of the museum," Wheeler says.
Almost 190,000 visitors paid to see the exhibition, while more than 300,000 people visited the museum during its four-month run. It is still a museum record. The turnout became the deciding factor in her decision to donate much of the collection to North Carolina, Cantor said.
While on the one hand wooing Cantor with the promise of a new building to house the sculptures, Wheeler was also selling elected officials in North Carolina on the benefit of paying for an expansion that could house the gift. After Cantor's donation was announced, state and local officials committed to spend $72.3 million to expand the museum's gallery space with a new building to house the permanent collection. (The old building has been renovated for exhibitions.)
Most art museums in urban settings, if they want to expand, can only go up. But the North Carolina museum sits on 164 acres, which allowed planners to pursue a one-level structure that highlights the surrounding landscape and allows more natural light into the building.
Natural light is the nemesis of curators because it can damage artwork. For the past 150 years, art museums were largely influenced by Greek and Roman architecture, which didn't have windows and thus the buildings acted like jewelry boxes, Kroloff explained. This model protected the art but left visitors feeling lost amid endless galleries, cut off from the outside world. The new building in Raleigh has 360 skylights, floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto courtyards and an elaborate system for controlling and diffusing the light as it comes into the building.
How did that happen? Wheeler, 66, doing what he does best. "I collect collectors, wherever they might be," Wheeler said, smiling.
ONLINE: www.ncartmuseum.org
Andrea Weigl. "A place open to beauty: Rodin sculpture trove anchors North Carolina Museum of Arts new building." Sunday Gazette-Mail. 2010. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-21917246.html
RALEIGH, N.C. - On a Sunday afternoon six years ago, Larry Wheeler, director of the North Carolina Museum of Art, pulled out his Crane stationery and wrote what might be the most important letter of his career: It was to Iris Cantor, owner of the largest private collection of Auguste Rodin works in the world.
Wheeler had cultivated Cantor's friendship since the late 1990s when they worked together on the Raleigh museum's record-breaking Rodin exhibition. In the years since, Wheeler had noticed Cantor focusing more on health-care philanthropy than the Rodin collection.
"You know I'm sympathetic," he recalls writing her. "You have a lot of responsibilities, a lot of demands. Maybe it's time to divest yourself of the Rodin collection." He brazenly asked that the bulk of the collection come to the North Carolina museum.
"He was eloquent," Cantor said in a recent interview. "He was persistent. Ultimately, he was successful."
The payoff was on display Saturday, when the museum opened its new 127,000-square-foot building after about a dozen years of planning and three years of construction. The 29 Rodin sculptures not only made the state art museum one of the largest repositories of the bronze castings in the country, it also helped push through funding for the expansion, triggered many other gifts of art and helped raise $30 million of the museum's continuing goal to reach $50 million in private contributions.
The result is an art collection in a new galleries building whose architecture is drawing national attention.
"North Carolina is going to be on the map now in a big way," said Reed Kroloff, director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum in Michigan, who has helped organize architect searches for museums. He added that the new building "is going to be heavily lionized in the architectural press by a highly respected New York-based architect who has done one beautiful building after another after another."
The story of how North Carolina became the beneficiary of all these riches despite a depressed economy began a little more than a decade ago, when a modest exhibition of Cantor's Rodins was touring the country. Wheeler, who became director of the museum in 1994, insisted the exhibition that would come to his museum have a far grander display.
So in the late 1990s, the always dapper Wheeler, with short silver hair framed by thick, black glasses, found himself nervous, sitting in the library of a Park Avenue apartment, surrounded by Rodin works and waiting to speak to Iris Cantor.
Gerald Cantor, who started the worldwide securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald, began collecting Rodin and other works in 1946. Through the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, they have given Rodins and other works to more than 70 museums and other institutions. After her husband died in 1996, Iris Cantor continued the gifts and supplied sculpture for exhibitions around the country.
It has been said that the Cantors made Rodin popular in the United States. After his death in 1917, Rodin's work had fallen out of favor as old-fashioned and sentimental at a time when abstract styles were emerging. Now his works like "The Thinker" are among the most recognizable in all of art, and he is praised for his ability to capture human emotion in bronze.
On that day when Cantor joined Wheeler in the library, he recalled her asking: "What can I do to help you?"
Wheeler launched into his spiel: To put on a more comprehensive Rodin exhibition than had previously been done, he needed loans from her private collection - he brought a list - and her assistance to get other museums to lend pieces she had donated. He explained that Stanford University had turned down his request for a loan of "The Thinker," the artist's most recognizable work.
"Well you know, I own 95 percent of that piece," Wheeler recalled Cantor saying. "I will just tell them to lend it."
With that, Wheeler says, Cantor became an advocate for gathering art for the Raleigh show in 2000.
He invited her to the opening. At first she refused, saying she never goes to those events. But she came, spending the whole weekend in the area. In her gown and jewels at the gala, she was a diva on the dance floor. "She left just enamored of the museum," Wheeler says.
Almost 190,000 visitors paid to see the exhibition, while more than 300,000 people visited the museum during its four-month run. It is still a museum record. The turnout became the deciding factor in her decision to donate much of the collection to North Carolina, Cantor said.
While on the one hand wooing Cantor with the promise of a new building to house the sculptures, Wheeler was also selling elected officials in North Carolina on the benefit of paying for an expansion that could house the gift. After Cantor's donation was announced, state and local officials committed to spend $72.3 million to expand the museum's gallery space with a new building to house the permanent collection. (The old building has been renovated for exhibitions.)
Most art museums in urban settings, if they want to expand, can only go up. But the North Carolina museum sits on 164 acres, which allowed planners to pursue a one-level structure that highlights the surrounding landscape and allows more natural light into the building.
Natural light is the nemesis of curators because it can damage artwork. For the past 150 years, art museums were largely influenced by Greek and Roman architecture, which didn't have windows and thus the buildings acted like jewelry boxes, Kroloff explained. This model protected the art but left visitors feeling lost amid endless galleries, cut off from the outside world. The new building in Raleigh has 360 skylights, floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto courtyards and an elaborate system for controlling and diffusing the light as it comes into the building.
How did that happen? Wheeler, 66, doing what he does best. "I collect collectors, wherever they might be," Wheeler said, smiling.
ONLINE: www.ncartmuseum.org
Andrea Weigl. "A place open to beauty: Rodin sculpture trove anchors North Carolina Museum of Arts new building." Sunday Gazette-Mail. 2010. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-21917246.html
"Rendezvous with Rodin: After Laying the Groundwork 15 Years Ago, a Curator Helps Turn 'A Magnificent Obsession' Into a Reality." by Tom Buckham,
March 16, 2004, Buffalo News, "Rendezvous with Rodin: After Laying the Groundwork 15 Years Ago, a Curator Helps Turn 'A Magnificent Obsession' Into a Reality." by Tom Buckham,
It has been on the Albright-Knox Art Gallery exhibition schedule for three years, but you could say that "Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession," opening April 20, actually set course for Buffalo in 1989.
That is when Kenneth Wayne, now the Albright's curator for modern art, began working on his doctoral dissertation about the great 19th century French sculptor at Stanford University. As a Cantor fellow, he grew close to B. Gerald and Iris Cantor, Stanford benefactors who owned the world's largest private collection of Rodin works -- 750 in all. The Cantor Foundation funded Wayne's research for five years, including a stint at Paris' Musee Rodin, where the young art scholar met his wife, Olivia.
Naturally, when Wayne joined the Albright in 1999, he began lobbying his old California friends for a Rodin exhibition.
"I knew the foundation organized traveling shows, so I said, 'Keep us in mind,' " the curator said Monday in a news conference announcing the Auguste Rodin exhibit and the companion "Bodily Space: New Obsessions in Figurative Sculpture," which will feature works by important contemporary artists.
"At the time, they had one tour that was filled up. Then, in 2001, they said they were starting another and put us first on the list," Wayne said.
"Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession" will exhibit 70 bronze works from the Cantor collection, including such well-known pieces as "The Thinker," "The Kiss," "The Cathedral" and "Monumental Head of Balzac," as well as many others that previously have not been shown publicly.
The sampling will demonstrate why the French artist was considered the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo, the Albright- Knox said.
"He single-handedly transformed the medium, which he thought had become somewhat stale, lifeless and boring," Wayne said. By questioning convention and doing away with rules, "he did for sculpture what Picasso did for painting."
In addition to the master's distinctive sculptures, the exhibition will feature works on paper by Rodin and artists he inspired, plus large-scale documentary photo blowups for background. A special three-dimensional display will explain the 10-step lost wax casting process by which bronze sculptures have been produced for centuries.
Two Rodins from the Albright-Knox collection, "Eve" and "The Age of Bronze," will complete the lineup.
The show's title refers to the Cantors' passion for collecting Rodin works. Their foundation donated more than 450 works to museums and 187 other sculptures to the Stanford University Museum of Art.
Bernard Cantor, founder and chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald securities, died in 1996. Wayne gave a eulogy on behalf of Cantor fellows. Iris Cantor, who lives in Bel Air, Calif., is foundation chairwoman and president.
"Bodily Space: New Obsessions in Figurative Sculpture" will complement "Rodin" by exploring overlapping themes such as the effect of space, context and size on perceptions of the sculptural body, as exemplified by Ron Mueck's comical yet solemn "Untitled (Big Man) 2000." Other contemporary artists who will be represented include Robert Gober, Janine Antonini, Anthony Gormley, Maurizio Cattelan, Tony Oursler, Charles Ray, Peter Sarkisian and Spencer Tunick.
"It's an opportunity to juxtapose a great 19th century master with what's happening today," said Albright-Knox Director Louis Grachos. "What you'll see is the breadth and range of what figurative art has become."
"Rodin," whose principal sponsor is M&T Bank, will remain in Buffalo until July 3, after which it will move to Utica and several Canadian museums before the tour winds up in Vancouver, British Columbia, in September 2005.
Tickets are on sale at the Albright-Knox admissions desk.
e-mail: tbuckham@buffnews.com
TOM BUCKHAM. "RENDEZVOUS WITH RODIN ; AFTER LAYING THE GROUNDWORK 15 YEARS AGO, A CURATOR; HELPS TURN 'A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION' INTO REALITY." Buffalo News. 2004. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-22671994.html
It has been on the Albright-Knox Art Gallery exhibition schedule for three years, but you could say that "Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession," opening April 20, actually set course for Buffalo in 1989.
That is when Kenneth Wayne, now the Albright's curator for modern art, began working on his doctoral dissertation about the great 19th century French sculptor at Stanford University. As a Cantor fellow, he grew close to B. Gerald and Iris Cantor, Stanford benefactors who owned the world's largest private collection of Rodin works -- 750 in all. The Cantor Foundation funded Wayne's research for five years, including a stint at Paris' Musee Rodin, where the young art scholar met his wife, Olivia.
Naturally, when Wayne joined the Albright in 1999, he began lobbying his old California friends for a Rodin exhibition.
"I knew the foundation organized traveling shows, so I said, 'Keep us in mind,' " the curator said Monday in a news conference announcing the Auguste Rodin exhibit and the companion "Bodily Space: New Obsessions in Figurative Sculpture," which will feature works by important contemporary artists.
"At the time, they had one tour that was filled up. Then, in 2001, they said they were starting another and put us first on the list," Wayne said.
"Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession" will exhibit 70 bronze works from the Cantor collection, including such well-known pieces as "The Thinker," "The Kiss," "The Cathedral" and "Monumental Head of Balzac," as well as many others that previously have not been shown publicly.
The sampling will demonstrate why the French artist was considered the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo, the Albright- Knox said.
"He single-handedly transformed the medium, which he thought had become somewhat stale, lifeless and boring," Wayne said. By questioning convention and doing away with rules, "he did for sculpture what Picasso did for painting."
In addition to the master's distinctive sculptures, the exhibition will feature works on paper by Rodin and artists he inspired, plus large-scale documentary photo blowups for background. A special three-dimensional display will explain the 10-step lost wax casting process by which bronze sculptures have been produced for centuries.
Two Rodins from the Albright-Knox collection, "Eve" and "The Age of Bronze," will complete the lineup.
The show's title refers to the Cantors' passion for collecting Rodin works. Their foundation donated more than 450 works to museums and 187 other sculptures to the Stanford University Museum of Art.
Bernard Cantor, founder and chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald securities, died in 1996. Wayne gave a eulogy on behalf of Cantor fellows. Iris Cantor, who lives in Bel Air, Calif., is foundation chairwoman and president.
"Bodily Space: New Obsessions in Figurative Sculpture" will complement "Rodin" by exploring overlapping themes such as the effect of space, context and size on perceptions of the sculptural body, as exemplified by Ron Mueck's comical yet solemn "Untitled (Big Man) 2000." Other contemporary artists who will be represented include Robert Gober, Janine Antonini, Anthony Gormley, Maurizio Cattelan, Tony Oursler, Charles Ray, Peter Sarkisian and Spencer Tunick.
"It's an opportunity to juxtapose a great 19th century master with what's happening today," said Albright-Knox Director Louis Grachos. "What you'll see is the breadth and range of what figurative art has become."
"Rodin," whose principal sponsor is M&T Bank, will remain in Buffalo until July 3, after which it will move to Utica and several Canadian museums before the tour winds up in Vancouver, British Columbia, in September 2005.
Tickets are on sale at the Albright-Knox admissions desk.
e-mail: tbuckham@buffnews.com
TOM BUCKHAM. "RENDEZVOUS WITH RODIN ; AFTER LAYING THE GROUNDWORK 15 YEARS AGO, A CURATOR; HELPS TURN 'A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION' INTO REALITY." Buffalo News. 2004. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-22671994.html
"Traveling exhibit takes one man's love to the people," by Kurt Kelly,
January 27, 2004, AP Worldstream, "Traveling exhibit takes one man's love to the people," by Kurt Kelly, Associated Press Writer,
Dateline: TULSA, Oklahoma
It was a most unfashionable love affair---the up-and-coming Wall Street broker falling for the works of a French sculptor who had long been out of vogue.
But from B. Gerald Cantor's first sight of "The Hand of God" in 1945, Auguste Rodin gripped him. What Cantor called his "magnificent obsession" grew big enough to share.
Now, Tulsa's Philbrook Museum of Art is one of the last stops scheduled in a decade-long tour of Rodin works from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.
The Cantors started the foundation in 1978 to share what they had built into the world's largest private Rodin collection. Two traveling exhibitions have appeared in more than 150 locations worldwide, often those farthest from mainstream museum cities.
"Bernie Cantor said, 'I can't take it ... to the grave with me, so I really want people to see it,'" said Judith Sobol, the foundation's executive director.
For curator James Peck, it is a thrill to bring Rodin icons such as "The Thinker" and "The Kiss" to audiences who know them but may never have seen them up close.
With more than 60 bronzes on display, the exhibition reveals an artist who struggled with rejection long after foundries were turning out hundreds of copies of his works to meet market demand.
Rodin was inspired by Michelangelo and yet his works were radical for their time.
The handyman next door served as the model for "Mask of a Man With a Broken Nose," Rodin's version of John the Baptist appears nude and emaciated, some of the martyrs in "The Burghers of Calais" seem to have second thoughts.
It would have been more accepted in the late 1800s to put one martyr stoically atop a pedestal instead of grouped together grappling with the burden of their sacrifice, Peck said.
Rodin liked to break the body apart, too, revealing torsos that look plucked from a Greek ruin or arthritic hands drawn back like cobras about to strike. In "The Cathedral," two hands gracefully intertwine to form an arch.
"He saw great expressiveness in hands," Peck said. "The hand has always been the conduit, especially for sculptors."
Skilled craftsmen took the works Rodin created in clay and replicated them in plaster, stone and ultimately metal. Most of the bronzes in the show were cast after Rodin's death in 1917 but under an agreement the sculptor had made with the French government before he died, Peck said.
Many of the works in the exhibit were cast in the latter half of the last century.
When Cantor was building his Rodin collection in the 1950s and 1960s, he was blissfully unaware that the sculptor had fallen out of style, he said.
The Cantors collected about 750 large and small-scale sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs and memorabilia. More than 450 works have been distributed to museums, including Philbrook which has four Rodin works in its permanent collection.
The exhibit "A Magnificent Obsession, Sculpture From the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation" opened Sunday and appears in Tulsa through March 28. It will travel to Buffalo and Utica, New York, and then on to Canada through 2005.
"Then we may give it a rest," Sobol said.
The pieces need to be examined for possible conservation work, and the foundation's board is rethinking shipment abroad in light of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, she said.
The foundation's second, smaller traveling Rodin exhibition is booked through 2007, she said.
Cantor, the founder of the international securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald, died in 1996. The bond trading firm lost two-thirds of its workers in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
KELLY KURT, Associated Press Writer. "Traveling exhibit takes one man's love to the people." AP Worldstream. 2004. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-89874803.html
Dateline: TULSA, Oklahoma
It was a most unfashionable love affair---the up-and-coming Wall Street broker falling for the works of a French sculptor who had long been out of vogue.
But from B. Gerald Cantor's first sight of "The Hand of God" in 1945, Auguste Rodin gripped him. What Cantor called his "magnificent obsession" grew big enough to share.
Now, Tulsa's Philbrook Museum of Art is one of the last stops scheduled in a decade-long tour of Rodin works from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.
The Cantors started the foundation in 1978 to share what they had built into the world's largest private Rodin collection. Two traveling exhibitions have appeared in more than 150 locations worldwide, often those farthest from mainstream museum cities.
"Bernie Cantor said, 'I can't take it ... to the grave with me, so I really want people to see it,'" said Judith Sobol, the foundation's executive director.
For curator James Peck, it is a thrill to bring Rodin icons such as "The Thinker" and "The Kiss" to audiences who know them but may never have seen them up close.
With more than 60 bronzes on display, the exhibition reveals an artist who struggled with rejection long after foundries were turning out hundreds of copies of his works to meet market demand.
Rodin was inspired by Michelangelo and yet his works were radical for their time.
The handyman next door served as the model for "Mask of a Man With a Broken Nose," Rodin's version of John the Baptist appears nude and emaciated, some of the martyrs in "The Burghers of Calais" seem to have second thoughts.
It would have been more accepted in the late 1800s to put one martyr stoically atop a pedestal instead of grouped together grappling with the burden of their sacrifice, Peck said.
Rodin liked to break the body apart, too, revealing torsos that look plucked from a Greek ruin or arthritic hands drawn back like cobras about to strike. In "The Cathedral," two hands gracefully intertwine to form an arch.
"He saw great expressiveness in hands," Peck said. "The hand has always been the conduit, especially for sculptors."
Skilled craftsmen took the works Rodin created in clay and replicated them in plaster, stone and ultimately metal. Most of the bronzes in the show were cast after Rodin's death in 1917 but under an agreement the sculptor had made with the French government before he died, Peck said.
Many of the works in the exhibit were cast in the latter half of the last century.
When Cantor was building his Rodin collection in the 1950s and 1960s, he was blissfully unaware that the sculptor had fallen out of style, he said.
The Cantors collected about 750 large and small-scale sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs and memorabilia. More than 450 works have been distributed to museums, including Philbrook which has four Rodin works in its permanent collection.
The exhibit "A Magnificent Obsession, Sculpture From the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation" opened Sunday and appears in Tulsa through March 28. It will travel to Buffalo and Utica, New York, and then on to Canada through 2005.
"Then we may give it a rest," Sobol said.
The pieces need to be examined for possible conservation work, and the foundation's board is rethinking shipment abroad in light of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, she said.
The foundation's second, smaller traveling Rodin exhibition is booked through 2007, she said.
Cantor, the founder of the international securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald, died in 1996. The bond trading firm lost two-thirds of its workers in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
KELLY KURT, Associated Press Writer. "Traveling exhibit takes one man's love to the people." AP Worldstream. 2004. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-89874803.html
"New York Financial Firm Cantor Fitzgerald Rebuilds from Sept. 11, 2001, Loss," by Michael L. Diamond,
September 11, 2003, Asbury Park Press / Knight Ridder/Tribune, "New York Financial Firm Cantor Fitzgerald Rebuilds from Sept. 11, 2001, Loss," by Michael L. Diamond,
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-107584777.html
Sept. 11--NEW YORK -- They are sitting together again, side by side, in front of banks of computers. They are celebrating birthdays with ice cream cake. Their voices get louder as the pressure intensifies in deals worth millions of dollars.
At least outwardly, Cantor Fitzgerald looks as if it is back to normal. There are no 9/11 memorials on display. There is no discernible sadness, but that's a little misleading.
"That experience will always be a part of us, and I think what drives us," company spokesman Tom Ryan said. "What helps us put our grief into focus is knowing the harder we work, the more successful we can be, the more it will benefit the families."
Two years after losing three-quarters of its work force in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Cantor Fitzgerald and its subsidiary eSpeed Inc. are continuing to rebuild, hiring workers and expanding their product lines.
Its bottom line has taken on an unusual importance; Cantor Fitzgerald's partners are donating 25 percent of their profits through 2006 to the family members of employees who were killed. And the company is providing then with health insurance for 10 years.
In all, the company, which was near the top of Tower One of the World Trade Center, lost 658 employees, including 68 who lived in Monmouth and Ocean counties.
Today, its temporary New York headquarters houses 434 workers and encompasses the third through seventh floors of an office building on 57th Street.
The differences are both glaring and trivial. The bulk of employees are new. And whereas the company once housed an extensive collection of Rodin artwork, there is now only one wall with two Rodin drawings on it and a few photographs of sculptures.
Cantor Fitzgerald consists of eSpeed, an electronic bond trading subsidiary that is a publicly traded company, and an equity division. Company officials and analysts said both are recovering.
The eSpeed system survived the trade center attack and was operational when the bond markets re-opened. The company is paid for each trade it makes, and it recently has benefited from the federal government's rising debt.
"Anytime debt comes due, (the federal government) has to issue new debt," translating into more revenue for eSpeed, said Richard X. Bove, an analyst with Hoefer & Arnet. The company's stock is up 61 percent since March, near a 52-week high. Cantor Fitzgerald owns 48 percent of eSpeed.
ESpeed's survival gave Cantor Fitzgerald a base on which to rebuild its equity division. It's that division that gives profits to family members.
Company officials say business there is improving steadily as well. It expects to earn $110 million this year, of which $27.5 million will go to families. And it expects to expand its Shrewsbury equity trading office from 35 employees to as many as 50 by the middle of next year.
"It's getting a little more comfortable, but will it ever be the same? It can't," said Craig Cummings of Rumson, manager of sales and trading for Cantor Fitzgerald in New Jersey. "There are people doing similar jobs, and it's a similar situation on the trading floor, but a lot of people are missing, and they can't be replaced."
Cummings has been with the company 10 years, and he was one of the few employees not in the trade center when a plane struck the building. And he said he is dealing with his grief by working without pause.
Family members of victims said the company has gone way beyond their expectations. In all, Cantor Fitzgerald has provided $120 million to family members. It plans to donate all of its revenue today to its charitable fund.
But families say the company has bent over backward to provide other services as well. It studied the victims' compensation fund to determine whether families should accept the government's financial offer in exchange for not filing lawsuits. Howard Lutnick, the company's chief executive officer, still answers phone calls and e-mails personally. And later this year, it plans to offer free financial counseling.
"They keep us constantly in tune with everything that's going on, every issue you can imagine," said Jennifer Sands, of Brick, whose husband, Jim, was a strategic development engineer at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Over the past year, the media attention has faded. A new work force has settled in, but "they have been just as good to us now as last year," Sands said.
To see more of the Asbury Park Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.app.com
(c) 2003, Asbury Park Press, N.J. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
"New York Financial Firm Cantor Fitzgerald Rebuilds from Sept. 11, 2001, Loss." Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-107584777.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-107584777.html
Sept. 11--NEW YORK -- They are sitting together again, side by side, in front of banks of computers. They are celebrating birthdays with ice cream cake. Their voices get louder as the pressure intensifies in deals worth millions of dollars.
At least outwardly, Cantor Fitzgerald looks as if it is back to normal. There are no 9/11 memorials on display. There is no discernible sadness, but that's a little misleading.
"That experience will always be a part of us, and I think what drives us," company spokesman Tom Ryan said. "What helps us put our grief into focus is knowing the harder we work, the more successful we can be, the more it will benefit the families."
Two years after losing three-quarters of its work force in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Cantor Fitzgerald and its subsidiary eSpeed Inc. are continuing to rebuild, hiring workers and expanding their product lines.
Its bottom line has taken on an unusual importance; Cantor Fitzgerald's partners are donating 25 percent of their profits through 2006 to the family members of employees who were killed. And the company is providing then with health insurance for 10 years.
In all, the company, which was near the top of Tower One of the World Trade Center, lost 658 employees, including 68 who lived in Monmouth and Ocean counties.
Today, its temporary New York headquarters houses 434 workers and encompasses the third through seventh floors of an office building on 57th Street.
The differences are both glaring and trivial. The bulk of employees are new. And whereas the company once housed an extensive collection of Rodin artwork, there is now only one wall with two Rodin drawings on it and a few photographs of sculptures.
Cantor Fitzgerald consists of eSpeed, an electronic bond trading subsidiary that is a publicly traded company, and an equity division. Company officials and analysts said both are recovering.
The eSpeed system survived the trade center attack and was operational when the bond markets re-opened. The company is paid for each trade it makes, and it recently has benefited from the federal government's rising debt.
"Anytime debt comes due, (the federal government) has to issue new debt," translating into more revenue for eSpeed, said Richard X. Bove, an analyst with Hoefer & Arnet. The company's stock is up 61 percent since March, near a 52-week high. Cantor Fitzgerald owns 48 percent of eSpeed.
ESpeed's survival gave Cantor Fitzgerald a base on which to rebuild its equity division. It's that division that gives profits to family members.
Company officials say business there is improving steadily as well. It expects to earn $110 million this year, of which $27.5 million will go to families. And it expects to expand its Shrewsbury equity trading office from 35 employees to as many as 50 by the middle of next year.
"It's getting a little more comfortable, but will it ever be the same? It can't," said Craig Cummings of Rumson, manager of sales and trading for Cantor Fitzgerald in New Jersey. "There are people doing similar jobs, and it's a similar situation on the trading floor, but a lot of people are missing, and they can't be replaced."
Cummings has been with the company 10 years, and he was one of the few employees not in the trade center when a plane struck the building. And he said he is dealing with his grief by working without pause.
Family members of victims said the company has gone way beyond their expectations. In all, Cantor Fitzgerald has provided $120 million to family members. It plans to donate all of its revenue today to its charitable fund.
But families say the company has bent over backward to provide other services as well. It studied the victims' compensation fund to determine whether families should accept the government's financial offer in exchange for not filing lawsuits. Howard Lutnick, the company's chief executive officer, still answers phone calls and e-mails personally. And later this year, it plans to offer free financial counseling.
"They keep us constantly in tune with everything that's going on, every issue you can imagine," said Jennifer Sands, of Brick, whose husband, Jim, was a strategic development engineer at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Over the past year, the media attention has faded. A new work force has settled in, but "they have been just as good to us now as last year," Sands said.
To see more of the Asbury Park Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.app.com
(c) 2003, Asbury Park Press, N.J. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
"New York Financial Firm Cantor Fitzgerald Rebuilds from Sept. 11, 2001, Loss." Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-107584777.html
"Haunting display details recovery at Ground Zero," by Marilyn H. Karfeld,
September 5, 2003, Cleveland Jewish News, "Haunting display details recovery at Ground Zero," by Marilyn H. Karfeld,
A shattered fragment of a Rodin sculpture lies face down in the dirt. Although missing some limbs, the sculpture of a well-muscled human body evokes the heights to which man can soar. As one of the mangled objects recovered from the wreckage of the World Trade Center, it's also poignantly descriptive of the evil man has caused. Photos of the Rodin sculpture (from the collection of Cantor Fitzgerald, whose World Trade Center offices were destroyed) are part of a small but haunting traveling exhibit from the New York State Museum. "Recovery: The World Trade Center Recovery Operation at Fresh Kills" begins its national tour in Cleveland at the Western Reserve Historical Society, where it remains through October 26.
About 60 photos and 30 objects tell the story of the recovery effort at Fresh Kills, a closed landfill on Staten Island that was supposed to become a wildlife refuge and park. Instead, it was reopened to sort through the 1.8 million tons of debris from Ground Zero, the name for the destroyed World Trade Center site. The entire operation was dubbed "The City on the Hill," as heated and air-conditioned trailers, running water facilities, and food operations to feed 1,500 workers a day were installed to facilitate the massive recovery effort.
The rescue workers aimed to find human remains, personal effects and evidence of the terrorist attacks. They did recover 4,257 pieces of human beings and 54,000 personal objects, although 95% of them belonged to survivors. Not a single bit of physical evidence of the terrorists---no cells phones, box cutters or the "black boxes" from the planes that flew into the Twin Towers---were ever located.
The color photographs show cranes and bulldozers lifting clumps of debris; huge piles of wire and elevator motors; and police detectives garbed in Tyvek suits, goggles and respirators sifting through mounds of dirt gliding by on conveyor belts. There are images of a torn New York City Hall flag and pieces of the planes that crashed into the towers.
Museum goers can activate a video that tells how workers went about looking for and identifying objects and human remains.
Also on exhibit are images of bins filled with keys, ID cards, and drivers' licenses; a muddy, ripped fireman's boot; a red biohazard container; and guns and cell phones, all evidence from criminal trials stored at the U.S. Customs House, World Trade Center Tower 6. One image shows a colorful souvenir baseball, marked "Top of the World," its illuminated windows a bright yellow against the darkened walls of the tower.
In one photo, two guns have melted from the intense heat of the fires and have fused together. Pictured in the rubble, a car seat with Dr. Seuss books inside speaks of a parent who may never have returned home from work that day.
Some objects recovered from the Twin Towers are displayed on white pedestals in glass cases, like museum treasures. A NYPD holster guard. Lime green fragments of airliner fuselage. Two chunks of marble from the floors. World Trade Center pins. Elevator floor number plaques. A Democratic primary-day campaign poster touting Berman for comptroller. A large, damaged American flag.
In a glass case stands a solitary, twisted, silvery piece of aluminum facade that once sheathed the Twin Towers.
Alongside the display is the Western Reserve Historical Society's companion exhibit to commemorate the lives of the 16 former or current residents of Ohio who lost their lives in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The victims are described as musicians, daughters of missionaries, Cincinnati Bengals fans, golfers, and neighbors, each someone who may have sat next to you in class or marched besides you in the school band.
The New York State Museum had sole access to the 10-month recovery effort at Fresh Kills. While the objects displayed are a grim reminder of the horrific event, there are no identifiable personal articles. The items may not be associated with a specific person, but they bear witness to the calamitous loss of human life. In all, nearly 2,800 people died in the Twin Towers collapse.
Article copyright the Cleveland Jewish News.
V.89;
Karfeld, Marilyn H.. "Haunting display details recovery at Ground Zero." Cleveland Jewish News. 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-86846083.html
A shattered fragment of a Rodin sculpture lies face down in the dirt. Although missing some limbs, the sculpture of a well-muscled human body evokes the heights to which man can soar. As one of the mangled objects recovered from the wreckage of the World Trade Center, it's also poignantly descriptive of the evil man has caused. Photos of the Rodin sculpture (from the collection of Cantor Fitzgerald, whose World Trade Center offices were destroyed) are part of a small but haunting traveling exhibit from the New York State Museum. "Recovery: The World Trade Center Recovery Operation at Fresh Kills" begins its national tour in Cleveland at the Western Reserve Historical Society, where it remains through October 26.
About 60 photos and 30 objects tell the story of the recovery effort at Fresh Kills, a closed landfill on Staten Island that was supposed to become a wildlife refuge and park. Instead, it was reopened to sort through the 1.8 million tons of debris from Ground Zero, the name for the destroyed World Trade Center site. The entire operation was dubbed "The City on the Hill," as heated and air-conditioned trailers, running water facilities, and food operations to feed 1,500 workers a day were installed to facilitate the massive recovery effort.
The rescue workers aimed to find human remains, personal effects and evidence of the terrorist attacks. They did recover 4,257 pieces of human beings and 54,000 personal objects, although 95% of them belonged to survivors. Not a single bit of physical evidence of the terrorists---no cells phones, box cutters or the "black boxes" from the planes that flew into the Twin Towers---were ever located.
The color photographs show cranes and bulldozers lifting clumps of debris; huge piles of wire and elevator motors; and police detectives garbed in Tyvek suits, goggles and respirators sifting through mounds of dirt gliding by on conveyor belts. There are images of a torn New York City Hall flag and pieces of the planes that crashed into the towers.
Museum goers can activate a video that tells how workers went about looking for and identifying objects and human remains.
Also on exhibit are images of bins filled with keys, ID cards, and drivers' licenses; a muddy, ripped fireman's boot; a red biohazard container; and guns and cell phones, all evidence from criminal trials stored at the U.S. Customs House, World Trade Center Tower 6. One image shows a colorful souvenir baseball, marked "Top of the World," its illuminated windows a bright yellow against the darkened walls of the tower.
In one photo, two guns have melted from the intense heat of the fires and have fused together. Pictured in the rubble, a car seat with Dr. Seuss books inside speaks of a parent who may never have returned home from work that day.
Some objects recovered from the Twin Towers are displayed on white pedestals in glass cases, like museum treasures. A NYPD holster guard. Lime green fragments of airliner fuselage. Two chunks of marble from the floors. World Trade Center pins. Elevator floor number plaques. A Democratic primary-day campaign poster touting Berman for comptroller. A large, damaged American flag.
In a glass case stands a solitary, twisted, silvery piece of aluminum facade that once sheathed the Twin Towers.
Alongside the display is the Western Reserve Historical Society's companion exhibit to commemorate the lives of the 16 former or current residents of Ohio who lost their lives in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The victims are described as musicians, daughters of missionaries, Cincinnati Bengals fans, golfers, and neighbors, each someone who may have sat next to you in class or marched besides you in the school band.
The New York State Museum had sole access to the 10-month recovery effort at Fresh Kills. While the objects displayed are a grim reminder of the horrific event, there are no identifiable personal articles. The items may not be associated with a specific person, but they bear witness to the calamitous loss of human life. In all, nearly 2,800 people died in the Twin Towers collapse.
Article copyright the Cleveland Jewish News.
V.89;
Karfeld, Marilyn H.. "Haunting display details recovery at Ground Zero." Cleveland Jewish News. 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-86846083.html
"Works lost, not forgotten; 'Missing Masterpieces' tells stories of 24 of them," by Kevin Chaffee,
August 2, 2003, The Washington Times, "Works lost, not forgotten; 'Missing Masterpieces' tells stories of 24 of them," by Kevin Chaffee,
Many priceless works of art have disappeared throughout history. Some are known to have been destroyed in accidents, disasters, wars, revolutions and - in the recent case of 300 Rodin sculptures lost in Cantor Fitzgerald's offices at the World Trade Center - terrorist attacks. Others simply vanished without a trace under unusual, sometimes even bizarre, circumstances. One suspects that few, if any, of these treasures will ever be seen again.
Although German art collector and publisher Gert-Rudolf "Muck" Flick admits the trail runs pretty cold for the 24 works he selected for inclusion in his impressive coffee-table book, "Missing Masterpieces: Lost Works of Art, 1450-1900" (Merrell Publishers), he insists there is still hope for their eventual recovery.
Just because no one has seen a particular item for two or three centuries doesn't mean it has irretrievably "perished," he writes in his book's introduction. The proverbial situation of an "unnoticed picture hanging on a landing in a country house" suddenly being "identified as an important Old Master ... is increasingly rare, but is by no means extinct."
Only recently, he notes, a Cimabue was discovered under just such circumstances. The exceedingly rare painting (now in London's National Gallery) was the first of the artist's works ever sold at auction.
Mr. Flick concentrates on works by Holbein, Titian, Jacques-Louis David, Michelangelo, Poussin, Caravaggio and Rubens (among others) that were highly esteemed in their own time. Most were commissioned by popes, kings or other wealthy patrons and were subsequently lost because of theft or accidental mis-attribution following key intervals of civil strife.
The author's highly selective concentration on a 450-year time frame ending with the year 1900 allows him to focus on important losses during the English Civil War and French Revolution but has been criticized for stopping well short of World War II, the most important period in history in terms of missing works of art.
Mr. Flick, 59, has a plausible explanation for stopping the detective work on "Missing Masterpieces" when he did but seems resigned to the controversy that inevitably follows him as a grandson of German industrialist Friedrich Flick, founder of the Mercedes-Benz automobile company, who stood trial at Nuremburg for expropriating Jewish assets and using forced labor in his steel plants during the war. After serving three years in prison, he was released on a grant of clemency in 1950 and rebuilt his empire. He died in 1972, leaving a fortune estimated at $1 billion.
Gert-Rudolf Flick, one of several eventual heirs to his grandfather's fortune, was born in France, studied law at the University of Munich and was a partner in the family's firm before selling off his interests between 1975 and 1985. A London-based collector of 18th-century Italian paintings and English silver, he was formerly the publisher of the Apollo art magazine. "Missing Masterpieces" is his first book.
Q. What got you interested in missing masterpieces?
A. I was looking for a subject and discovered that a friend, Peter Watson, had a project to make a compendium of all missing works of art of any relevance: a very large book with just the names of the works and perhaps two or three lines about each. We started doing this, but after three or four weeks, we realized it was turning into a bookkeeping exercise and wouldn't be very interesting. We knew we had to do something else. My friend decided to do a book on the history of ideas, "A Terrible Beauty." I stayed with the subject and transformed it from thousands of items [to] just 24, which would be analyzed in detail.
Q. There are more than 130,000 missing works on the Art Register. How did you come up with your 24? It must have been a huge process of elimination.
A. I had certain criteria. They had to come from an important artist and be important works, if not masterpieces. The third absolute requirement was to have a visual representation in the form of a drawing or engraving or a copy. Also, they had to have gone through a sequence of collections, ideally of important owners. If the work was made for just one person and lost immediately afterward, it wouldn't have made a very interesting story.
Q. Obviously you were looking for dramatic aspect: wars, revolutions, owners' poisonings, etc. Which works were most compelling?
A. The most important one is probably Michelangelo's bronze sculpture of "David," which was so famous in its day that it was celebrated in an address at the artist's funeral even though it had been created some 60 years before. It disappeared during the French Revolution. The owner, the Duc de Villeroy, was executed, his goods confiscated, and then all record was lost. Two secretaries of the French Revolutionary Council wrote in their inventory report that it should adorn some public place, so from that I assume it was not meant to be destroyed.
Q. Wars and political upheavals seem to be the main reasons major works of art are lost.
A. Masterpieces are lost or stolen all the time - and found all of the time - but there are certain periods in history when such activity is on a completely different level because of internal unrest: war, invasions, etc. This was especially true during the English Civil War when Charles I's huge collection was dispersed on the orders of the House of Commons. Over 3,000 paintings hit the market within five years, including Titian's famous "Portrait of Isabella d'Este in Red." The Duke of Hamilton was executed in 1649, and his 2,000 paintings were also sold. After the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated ... and the Earl of Arundel was forced into exile, the same thing happened to their enormous collections. So, in the first half of the 17th century, four major collections were sold. That has never happened again as far as such quality is concerned. King Charles' collection, you see, was really the Gonzaga Collection, which had been assembled over centuries. Charles I was able to buy it en bloc in 1628.
Q. You write that people have the idea that works of art aren't terribly durable, but in fact, they usually survive longer than the buildings that house them.
A. Canvas is more durable than one imagines. Water doesn't really affect it that much. Paintings can be moved and survive; buildings come down.
Q. While you were writing, several of the missing masterpieces you were planning to include in the book actually turned up.
A. Joseph Wright of Derby's "The Siege of Gibraltar" was found in the Milwaukee Art Museum. It had been miscataloged as a work by [John Robert] Cozens.
Q. So, hope remains that these works may eventually be found?
A. Mis-attribution is the most common form of being lost. Something definitely exists, but we don't really know where. It will definitely have a wrong label. Caravaggio's famous "The Betrayal of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane," for example, ended up in a Jesuit monastery, where it was thought to be the work of [Gerrit van] Honthorst, a follower of Caravaggio's. A hundred years later, in 1992, an Italian art historian named Benedetti saw it and thought it was too good to be by Honthorst. He checked it out, and he was right. It was the missing Caravaggio.
Q. What can be done to retrieve something like the Benvenuto Cellini salt cellars, which were stolen recently from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna?
A. First of all, most things that are held in museums are not insured, so thieves cannot hope an insurance company will ransom them. They can only ask the museum to pay for their return, but museums don't have that much money. I understand the Austrian government has offered 70,000 euros ($78,712) for information that could lead to the discovery of the Cellini work, which is unique and valued at maybe 50 million euros ($56.2 million). A worthwhile exercise would be for a number of contributors to raise a million euros - say, ten people giving 100,000 euros ($112.45 million) each. That's a lot of money, and one could be reasonably optimistic that some information might be forthcoming.
Q. You've been criticized for not including works that went missing in the 20th century, especially those that disappeared during World War II at the hands of the Germans. It looked to some as if you wanted to avoid that era.
A. It could have been done. I don't deny that important works of art were stolen in this period. I'm not a Nazi. ... But there are so many scholars and government agencies - maybe hundreds of them - working to retrieve works of art appropriated during that period that I wasn't sure I could have made a specific contribution. Originally, I wanted to include one or two from that time, especially the Czartoryski family's "Portrait of a Young Man" by Raphael, one of six works confiscated by the notorious [Reichskommisar] Hans Frank in January 1945, when Poland fell into Russian hands. It was the only one not recovered from his mountain retreat in Bavaria. There was a joint-venture investigation in the '50s by the Czartoryski family and the art dealer Wildenstein, but I couldn't get access to the files.
Q. Why not examine the World War II era in a sequel?
A. I've thought about it. I have enough material to write a second volume - and I could probably include 20th-century works.
Q. Critics imply you didn't want to touch upon the era because of your grandfather's experience during the war.
A. It's not primarily that it has something to do with my family, but I am obviously aware that if I make a mistake and say that something was stolen or missing and it wasn't, then it would be a bit more problematic for me because of my name than for somebody else.
Q. Your brother [Friedrich Christian "Mick" Flick] had major problems when he tried to establish a museum to house his collection of contemporary art.
A. That was only in Zurich. Now, the Senate of Berlin has given him a building, an old railroad depot, where he can exhibit his collection as of April of next year.
Q. You had a similar problem in 1996 when Oxford University dons opposed your endowment of a Flick Chair of European Thought at Balliol College because of the source of your family's wealth.
A. Actually, the dons would have taken it [smiles]. I was going to give them quite a lot of money. ... The student parliament together with some journalists were the ones who objected to the link between my family and the Third Reich. They just didn't want [the chair]. But I got my money back, and they found somebody else to sponsor it.
CAPTION(S):
Gert-Rudolf Flick was interviewed at the Four Seasons Hotel about his book, "Missing Masterpieces: Lost Works of Art, 1450-1900." At left is Peter Paul Rubens' circa 1601 copy of Titian's missing "Portrait of Isabella D'Este in Red." At far left is a pen-and-ink study for the lost bronze "David" (1502-03) and an arm of David by Michelangelo. [Photo of Flick by Nancy Pastor/The Washington Times; 2 photos of missing art NO CREDIT]
"Works lost, not forgotten; 'Missing Masterpieces' tells stories of 24 of them.(ARTS)(PARTY LINES)." The Washington Times (Washington, DC). 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-106219043.html
Many priceless works of art have disappeared throughout history. Some are known to have been destroyed in accidents, disasters, wars, revolutions and - in the recent case of 300 Rodin sculptures lost in Cantor Fitzgerald's offices at the World Trade Center - terrorist attacks. Others simply vanished without a trace under unusual, sometimes even bizarre, circumstances. One suspects that few, if any, of these treasures will ever be seen again.
Although German art collector and publisher Gert-Rudolf "Muck" Flick admits the trail runs pretty cold for the 24 works he selected for inclusion in his impressive coffee-table book, "Missing Masterpieces: Lost Works of Art, 1450-1900" (Merrell Publishers), he insists there is still hope for their eventual recovery.
Just because no one has seen a particular item for two or three centuries doesn't mean it has irretrievably "perished," he writes in his book's introduction. The proverbial situation of an "unnoticed picture hanging on a landing in a country house" suddenly being "identified as an important Old Master ... is increasingly rare, but is by no means extinct."
Only recently, he notes, a Cimabue was discovered under just such circumstances. The exceedingly rare painting (now in London's National Gallery) was the first of the artist's works ever sold at auction.
Mr. Flick concentrates on works by Holbein, Titian, Jacques-Louis David, Michelangelo, Poussin, Caravaggio and Rubens (among others) that were highly esteemed in their own time. Most were commissioned by popes, kings or other wealthy patrons and were subsequently lost because of theft or accidental mis-attribution following key intervals of civil strife.
The author's highly selective concentration on a 450-year time frame ending with the year 1900 allows him to focus on important losses during the English Civil War and French Revolution but has been criticized for stopping well short of World War II, the most important period in history in terms of missing works of art.
Mr. Flick, 59, has a plausible explanation for stopping the detective work on "Missing Masterpieces" when he did but seems resigned to the controversy that inevitably follows him as a grandson of German industrialist Friedrich Flick, founder of the Mercedes-Benz automobile company, who stood trial at Nuremburg for expropriating Jewish assets and using forced labor in his steel plants during the war. After serving three years in prison, he was released on a grant of clemency in 1950 and rebuilt his empire. He died in 1972, leaving a fortune estimated at $1 billion.
Gert-Rudolf Flick, one of several eventual heirs to his grandfather's fortune, was born in France, studied law at the University of Munich and was a partner in the family's firm before selling off his interests between 1975 and 1985. A London-based collector of 18th-century Italian paintings and English silver, he was formerly the publisher of the Apollo art magazine. "Missing Masterpieces" is his first book.
Q. What got you interested in missing masterpieces?
A. I was looking for a subject and discovered that a friend, Peter Watson, had a project to make a compendium of all missing works of art of any relevance: a very large book with just the names of the works and perhaps two or three lines about each. We started doing this, but after three or four weeks, we realized it was turning into a bookkeeping exercise and wouldn't be very interesting. We knew we had to do something else. My friend decided to do a book on the history of ideas, "A Terrible Beauty." I stayed with the subject and transformed it from thousands of items [to] just 24, which would be analyzed in detail.
Q. There are more than 130,000 missing works on the Art Register. How did you come up with your 24? It must have been a huge process of elimination.
A. I had certain criteria. They had to come from an important artist and be important works, if not masterpieces. The third absolute requirement was to have a visual representation in the form of a drawing or engraving or a copy. Also, they had to have gone through a sequence of collections, ideally of important owners. If the work was made for just one person and lost immediately afterward, it wouldn't have made a very interesting story.
Q. Obviously you were looking for dramatic aspect: wars, revolutions, owners' poisonings, etc. Which works were most compelling?
A. The most important one is probably Michelangelo's bronze sculpture of "David," which was so famous in its day that it was celebrated in an address at the artist's funeral even though it had been created some 60 years before. It disappeared during the French Revolution. The owner, the Duc de Villeroy, was executed, his goods confiscated, and then all record was lost. Two secretaries of the French Revolutionary Council wrote in their inventory report that it should adorn some public place, so from that I assume it was not meant to be destroyed.
Q. Wars and political upheavals seem to be the main reasons major works of art are lost.
A. Masterpieces are lost or stolen all the time - and found all of the time - but there are certain periods in history when such activity is on a completely different level because of internal unrest: war, invasions, etc. This was especially true during the English Civil War when Charles I's huge collection was dispersed on the orders of the House of Commons. Over 3,000 paintings hit the market within five years, including Titian's famous "Portrait of Isabella d'Este in Red." The Duke of Hamilton was executed in 1649, and his 2,000 paintings were also sold. After the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated ... and the Earl of Arundel was forced into exile, the same thing happened to their enormous collections. So, in the first half of the 17th century, four major collections were sold. That has never happened again as far as such quality is concerned. King Charles' collection, you see, was really the Gonzaga Collection, which had been assembled over centuries. Charles I was able to buy it en bloc in 1628.
Q. You write that people have the idea that works of art aren't terribly durable, but in fact, they usually survive longer than the buildings that house them.
A. Canvas is more durable than one imagines. Water doesn't really affect it that much. Paintings can be moved and survive; buildings come down.
Q. While you were writing, several of the missing masterpieces you were planning to include in the book actually turned up.
A. Joseph Wright of Derby's "The Siege of Gibraltar" was found in the Milwaukee Art Museum. It had been miscataloged as a work by [John Robert] Cozens.
Q. So, hope remains that these works may eventually be found?
A. Mis-attribution is the most common form of being lost. Something definitely exists, but we don't really know where. It will definitely have a wrong label. Caravaggio's famous "The Betrayal of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane," for example, ended up in a Jesuit monastery, where it was thought to be the work of [Gerrit van] Honthorst, a follower of Caravaggio's. A hundred years later, in 1992, an Italian art historian named Benedetti saw it and thought it was too good to be by Honthorst. He checked it out, and he was right. It was the missing Caravaggio.
Q. What can be done to retrieve something like the Benvenuto Cellini salt cellars, which were stolen recently from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna?
A. First of all, most things that are held in museums are not insured, so thieves cannot hope an insurance company will ransom them. They can only ask the museum to pay for their return, but museums don't have that much money. I understand the Austrian government has offered 70,000 euros ($78,712) for information that could lead to the discovery of the Cellini work, which is unique and valued at maybe 50 million euros ($56.2 million). A worthwhile exercise would be for a number of contributors to raise a million euros - say, ten people giving 100,000 euros ($112.45 million) each. That's a lot of money, and one could be reasonably optimistic that some information might be forthcoming.
Q. You've been criticized for not including works that went missing in the 20th century, especially those that disappeared during World War II at the hands of the Germans. It looked to some as if you wanted to avoid that era.
A. It could have been done. I don't deny that important works of art were stolen in this period. I'm not a Nazi. ... But there are so many scholars and government agencies - maybe hundreds of them - working to retrieve works of art appropriated during that period that I wasn't sure I could have made a specific contribution. Originally, I wanted to include one or two from that time, especially the Czartoryski family's "Portrait of a Young Man" by Raphael, one of six works confiscated by the notorious [Reichskommisar] Hans Frank in January 1945, when Poland fell into Russian hands. It was the only one not recovered from his mountain retreat in Bavaria. There was a joint-venture investigation in the '50s by the Czartoryski family and the art dealer Wildenstein, but I couldn't get access to the files.
Q. Why not examine the World War II era in a sequel?
A. I've thought about it. I have enough material to write a second volume - and I could probably include 20th-century works.
Q. Critics imply you didn't want to touch upon the era because of your grandfather's experience during the war.
A. It's not primarily that it has something to do with my family, but I am obviously aware that if I make a mistake and say that something was stolen or missing and it wasn't, then it would be a bit more problematic for me because of my name than for somebody else.
Q. Your brother [Friedrich Christian "Mick" Flick] had major problems when he tried to establish a museum to house his collection of contemporary art.
A. That was only in Zurich. Now, the Senate of Berlin has given him a building, an old railroad depot, where he can exhibit his collection as of April of next year.
Q. You had a similar problem in 1996 when Oxford University dons opposed your endowment of a Flick Chair of European Thought at Balliol College because of the source of your family's wealth.
A. Actually, the dons would have taken it [smiles]. I was going to give them quite a lot of money. ... The student parliament together with some journalists were the ones who objected to the link between my family and the Third Reich. They just didn't want [the chair]. But I got my money back, and they found somebody else to sponsor it.
CAPTION(S):
Gert-Rudolf Flick was interviewed at the Four Seasons Hotel about his book, "Missing Masterpieces: Lost Works of Art, 1450-1900." At left is Peter Paul Rubens' circa 1601 copy of Titian's missing "Portrait of Isabella D'Este in Red." At far left is a pen-and-ink study for the lost bronze "David" (1502-03) and an arm of David by Michelangelo. [Photo of Flick by Nancy Pastor/The Washington Times; 2 photos of missing art NO CREDIT]
"Works lost, not forgotten; 'Missing Masterpieces' tells stories of 24 of them.(ARTS)(PARTY LINES)." The Washington Times (Washington, DC). 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-106219043.html
"When great works of art become casualties of war," by Gale Iain,
February 16, 2003, Scotland on Sunday, "When great works of art become casualties of war," by Gale Iain,
OPEN any monograph on any artist, from Giotto to Warhol, and somewhere in the list of works you will invariably find a short but ringingly poignant word. 'Lost' is an art-historical commonplace and hardly surprising given the way in which over the past six centuries art has changed hands. But what exactly does it mean and how does it happen? A new book attempts to shed light on both questions.
Missing Masterpieces is a fascinating collection of art- historical detective stories, in which Gert-Rudolf Flick, sometime proprietor of art journal Apollo, examines the fate of 24 lost works of art. While much of the text would be too esoteric for all but the art-history scholar, it does raise broader questions.
Flick's book is a catalogue of cultural catastrophe. A sad and horribly frustrating aide-memoire to works which it is now impossible to see, and most of which, for lack of illustration, we are left only to conjure in the mind. In some cases, however, images do survive as engravings or copies and a picture emerges of the extent of our loss. And as it does we begin to ask, if this is what a mere 24 pictures represent, what are we missing in the 130,000 works of art---including pieces by Van Gogh, Monet and almost every world-class painter---currently noted by the Art Loss Register, the international record of missing works of art?
Perhaps the most telling lesson of Flick's book is on the way in which art goes missing. Theft, accident and mis-attribution are front-runners, but time and again it is violent conflict which is the underlying cause. Many works lost during the Second World War have recently been joined by cultural casualties from conflicts in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Flick's book, though, starts by looking back three centuries, to two earlier wars.
In the mid-17th century, as the Thirty Years War ravaged Europe and its art treasures, the English Civil War spelt similar calamity for Britain's art. The fabulous collection of Charles I was dispersed after the king's execution, and those of other proscribed aristocrats also suffered, not always from simple acts of violence. Flick laments the sequestration by parliament of the property of the Earl of Arundel and Duke of Hamilton, resulting in the selling-off of their collections. For it is when such well-kept collections are broken up that works go missing.
Of the king's own paintings, while some, including a few by Rubens, were thrown into the Thames, most were sold at Somerset House---to pay for the army that had defeated him. Others went to pay off royal debts. So Charles's plumber got a Titian, his builder a Correggio, and to his draper, one John Geere, went Van Dyck's group portrait of Charles's children and Titian's reportedly sublime portrait of Isabella d'Este. He was its last recorded owner.
If official policy destroyed Stuart Britain's important collections, disasters also came at a lower level as Puritan iconoclasts embarked on an orgy of destruction of religious art. The process was repeated a century later in Revolutionary France. Flick cites the destruction of Old Masters belonging to Louis XVI and examines how the sale of the collection of the soon to be guillotined duc d'Orleans resulted in the eventual loss of important works. Similarly, in 1917 the Bolsheviks vandalised much of Russia's imperial and aristocratic art collections and 30 years later the Nazis famously burnt works by so-called 'degenerate' artists, including Matisse, Gauguin and Picasso.
In our own time the process is echoed in the devastation wrought by the Taliban. And it's not just bigots who are to blame. Looting has always gone hand in hand with war. While the soldiery long saw it as a right, at the highest level looting was authorised to create new collections: in Napoleon's case, the Louvre. In the 20th century, with the occupying Nazis came a high command keen to acquire works of art. While Goering was the arch-connoisseur, thievery was rife and Raphael's famous Portrait of a Young Man, once in a Polish collection, was last seen in the hands of a Wehrmacht General.
There is, however, no room for complacency. For even without such self-interest, war can sanction cultural vandalism in the name of humanity. In February 1945 the British and Americans bombed Dresden, obliterating forever one of the gems of the Northern Baroque. Food for thought as we prepare to go to war against Iraq, home of some of the world's most important ancient monuments.
Remember too, though, the little-reported fact that when the twin towers went down on 9/11, some 300 Rodin sculptures from the collection of Cantor Fitzgerald were also reduced to rubble.
War, however it comes, as a clash of interests, a pre-emptive strike, a punitive mission or an act of terror, brings more than a terrible loss of human life. It brings a loss of art. A lessening of humanity.
Missing Masterpieces, Merrell, GBP 40
IAIN GALE. "When great works of art become casualties of war." Scotland on Sunday. 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-12941481.html
OPEN any monograph on any artist, from Giotto to Warhol, and somewhere in the list of works you will invariably find a short but ringingly poignant word. 'Lost' is an art-historical commonplace and hardly surprising given the way in which over the past six centuries art has changed hands. But what exactly does it mean and how does it happen? A new book attempts to shed light on both questions.
Missing Masterpieces is a fascinating collection of art- historical detective stories, in which Gert-Rudolf Flick, sometime proprietor of art journal Apollo, examines the fate of 24 lost works of art. While much of the text would be too esoteric for all but the art-history scholar, it does raise broader questions.
Flick's book is a catalogue of cultural catastrophe. A sad and horribly frustrating aide-memoire to works which it is now impossible to see, and most of which, for lack of illustration, we are left only to conjure in the mind. In some cases, however, images do survive as engravings or copies and a picture emerges of the extent of our loss. And as it does we begin to ask, if this is what a mere 24 pictures represent, what are we missing in the 130,000 works of art---including pieces by Van Gogh, Monet and almost every world-class painter---currently noted by the Art Loss Register, the international record of missing works of art?
Perhaps the most telling lesson of Flick's book is on the way in which art goes missing. Theft, accident and mis-attribution are front-runners, but time and again it is violent conflict which is the underlying cause. Many works lost during the Second World War have recently been joined by cultural casualties from conflicts in the Balkans and Afghanistan. Flick's book, though, starts by looking back three centuries, to two earlier wars.
In the mid-17th century, as the Thirty Years War ravaged Europe and its art treasures, the English Civil War spelt similar calamity for Britain's art. The fabulous collection of Charles I was dispersed after the king's execution, and those of other proscribed aristocrats also suffered, not always from simple acts of violence. Flick laments the sequestration by parliament of the property of the Earl of Arundel and Duke of Hamilton, resulting in the selling-off of their collections. For it is when such well-kept collections are broken up that works go missing.
Of the king's own paintings, while some, including a few by Rubens, were thrown into the Thames, most were sold at Somerset House---to pay for the army that had defeated him. Others went to pay off royal debts. So Charles's plumber got a Titian, his builder a Correggio, and to his draper, one John Geere, went Van Dyck's group portrait of Charles's children and Titian's reportedly sublime portrait of Isabella d'Este. He was its last recorded owner.
If official policy destroyed Stuart Britain's important collections, disasters also came at a lower level as Puritan iconoclasts embarked on an orgy of destruction of religious art. The process was repeated a century later in Revolutionary France. Flick cites the destruction of Old Masters belonging to Louis XVI and examines how the sale of the collection of the soon to be guillotined duc d'Orleans resulted in the eventual loss of important works. Similarly, in 1917 the Bolsheviks vandalised much of Russia's imperial and aristocratic art collections and 30 years later the Nazis famously burnt works by so-called 'degenerate' artists, including Matisse, Gauguin and Picasso.
In our own time the process is echoed in the devastation wrought by the Taliban. And it's not just bigots who are to blame. Looting has always gone hand in hand with war. While the soldiery long saw it as a right, at the highest level looting was authorised to create new collections: in Napoleon's case, the Louvre. In the 20th century, with the occupying Nazis came a high command keen to acquire works of art. While Goering was the arch-connoisseur, thievery was rife and Raphael's famous Portrait of a Young Man, once in a Polish collection, was last seen in the hands of a Wehrmacht General.
There is, however, no room for complacency. For even without such self-interest, war can sanction cultural vandalism in the name of humanity. In February 1945 the British and Americans bombed Dresden, obliterating forever one of the gems of the Northern Baroque. Food for thought as we prepare to go to war against Iraq, home of some of the world's most important ancient monuments.
Remember too, though, the little-reported fact that when the twin towers went down on 9/11, some 300 Rodin sculptures from the collection of Cantor Fitzgerald were also reduced to rubble.
War, however it comes, as a clash of interests, a pre-emptive strike, a punitive mission or an act of terror, brings more than a terrible loss of human life. It brings a loss of art. A lessening of humanity.
Missing Masterpieces, Merrell, GBP 40
IAIN GALE. "When great works of art become casualties of war." Scotland on Sunday. 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-12941481.html
"Lost art," by Bill Flynn,
January 1, 2003, NFPA Journal [National Fire Protection Association,] "Lost art," by Bill Flynn,
On September 11, 2001, America's loss extended beyond the overwhelming death toll to include countless artistic and historical treasures that can never be replaced
THE TRAGEDY OF September 11, 2001, is second to none in U.S. history, and Americans will forever remember the nearly 3,000 people who died that day. As if the catastrophic loss of life weren't bad enough, the terrorist acts also destroyed millions of dollars worth of art and historical artifacts in New York City and Arlington, Virginia. In fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that property insurance claims alone will eventually reach billions of dollars in what the Insurance Journal has called the largest single insurance disaster in world history.
At the time of the incident, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were home to an estimated $100 million worth of art, historical archives, and artifacts. At least 500 corporations, non-profit organizations, and municipal, state, and federal departments or agencies also stored their records, archives, and libraries in those buildings. At the World Trade Center and nearby buildings alone, the property losses sustained by art and historical institutions are expected to reach tens of millions of dollars. At the Pentagon, which is self-insured, the attack destroyed 24 works of art from the collections of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps and considerably damaged another 40. The Pentagon library, although eventually recovering most of its collection, was out of commission for months after the disaster.
To assess the damage cultural and historic institutions in Lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon, the Heritage Emergency National Task Force commissioned a report entitled "Cataclysm and Challenge: Impact of September 11, 2001 on Our Nation's Cultural Heritage." The report describes the artwork, historical artifacts, archives, and libraries in the seven buildings of the World Trade Center complex and in adjacent buildings, and lists damage to the artwork at the Pentagon and to its library. The report was based, in part, on the results of a survey sent to 122 cultural and historic institutions in or near the World Trade Center aimed at assessing the level of damage they sustained, how prepared they were to cope with disaster, and how they responded in the aftermath of the attacks.
Jane Long, director of the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, says one of the most significant results of the survey was the discovery that collecting institutions need to do a better job planning for continuity of operations.
"The collections of some institutions were completely destroyed," Long says. "Other museums and archives, though, sustained relatively moderate damage initially, but the damage got worse over time because the institutions weren't prepared. It really was a surprising result, but there's a great need to be much more attentive to the continuity of operations following a disaster."
Long says the longer damaged artwork sits without attention, the more likely the damage is to worsen. Mundane issues at many institutions, such as the lack of cleaning equipment or materials needed to stabilize the environment, contributed to damage weeks after the initial attacks.
"It would seem that addressing this aspect of emergency preparedness is something virtually every collecting institution in the country ought to address" Long says.
The Heritage Emergency National Task Force, established in 1995, is a partnership of 34 federal agencies and national non-profit organizations, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Heritage Preservation, Inc. The task force was founded as a result of the 1991 San Francisco earthquake and Hurricane Hugo in 1989 as a way to help libraries, museums, archives, and historical sites protect themselves from natural and other disasters. The task force preaches the need to develop emergency plans, teaches loss-mitigation techniques, and provides expert information on response and salvage when a disaster occurs. The primary financial supporters of the "Cataclysm and Challenge" report were the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Bay Foundation of New York City.
The extent of the losses
Among the artworks destroyed on September 11 were several by world-renowned artists, including Pablo Picasso, David Hockney, Roy Lichenstein, and Ross Bleckner. Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond brokerage firm on the 105th floor of Tower One that lost all its employees working in the building that day, also lost everything in its "museum in the sky" collection, including drawings, casts, and sculptures by the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Reportedly, this privately owned collection was worth millions.
More than 100 works of art owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were also on display in the vast public spaces of the 16-acre (0.16-hectare) World Trade Center complex, including works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Joan Miro, and Masayuki Nagare. Perhaps the most recognizable among them were two huge outdoor sculptures, Fritz Koenig's "Sphere for Plaza Fountain" and James Rosati's "Ideogram." After the attacks, virtually everything inside the buildings was gone, and only the Koenig piece, although badly damaged, survived outside, where it's on display again as a symbol of hope and survival. According to the Heritage Emergency National Task Force report, this public art was worth an estimated $8 million to $10 million. Copies of the report are available at www.heritagepreservation.org/NEWS/ Cataclysm.htm.
The Port Authority also lost archives dating back to the 1920s that documented the construction of many New York City landmarks, including the World Trade Center itself. Among other artifacts that were destroyed were thousands of pieces from an eighteenth-century African burial ground and more than one million artifacts from the nineteenth-century workingclass neighborhood of Five Points.
In spite of these irreplaceable losses, stories of discovery and resourcefulness also emerged. "Bent Propeller," a stabile by Calder, was one of the best-known works of art at the World Trade Center. Officials assumed it had been destroyed along with the hundreds of other pieces, but shortly after the disaster, the artist's grandson, Alexander Rower, began distributing flyers describing the sculpture to recovery workers. Consequently, more than 35 percent of the sculpture has been recovered. Whether it can be reconstituted hasn't yet been determined.
Some cultural institutions near the World Trade Center survived the devastation, either through fate, as in the case of St. Paul's Chapel, or, in the case of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, through sound implementation of an emergency plan.
St. Paul's Chapel, which sits a block north of the World Trade Center site, is the oldest public building in continuous use in Manhattan and its only surviving colonial church. George Washington prayed there before his inauguration, and the first rendition of the Great Seal of the United States hangs above the pew where he knelt. Remarkably, the church survived with little more damage than a thick coating of dust and ash.
Even more inspiring is the story of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City, just south of the World Trade Center. Just minutes after the first jet crashed into Tower One, the museum's fire alarm system began an automatic shutdown of outside air vents. When Lower Manhattan lost power several minutes later and the automated procedures stopped, the museum's engineers climbed onto the roof and manually closed the remaining vents, even as law enforcement began evacuating the area.
Two days later, when a few museum employees were allowed to reenter the building for a quick inspection, they found no damage to the structure or its collection, not even a speck of dust-all because the vents had been properly closed and the water turned off.
Other institutions weren't as lucky or prepared, and many suffered heart-wrenching losses. Two blocks south of the World Trade Center, on West Street, stood the West Street Building, built in 1907 by Cass Gilbert, a prominent architect of the early twentieth century who later designed the Woolworth Building, one of the first true skyscrapers. The West Street Building was the headquarters of the Helen Keller Foundation, and its archives contained rare documents on the causes and treatment of blindness, as well as photographs, historical files, first editions of books, and letters written by Helen Keller. The entire collection about this remarkable woman is gone.
On Cedar Street, a block away from Tower Two of the World Trade Center, stood St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. For nearly a century, this tiny church served the needs of the Orthodox Christian community on Lower Manhattan, housing the relics of St. Nicholas and St. Katherine and a magnificent collection of old gold chalices, candelabra, crosses, and icons. Several of the icons were gifts from Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. On September 11, the church and its contents were demolished. Recovery workers found twisted candelabra and several candles in the debris, the only physical evidence that St. Nicholas Church ever existed.
At the Pentagon, weeks passed before librarians were able to assess the damage to the institution's large military library and archives. Fires fed by jet fuel burned for nearly a week, and the library remained off limits for several more weeks while federal agents conducted their criminal investigation. By the time the librarians were able to return, they found the facility overgrown with toxic mold. Ultimately, library officials were able to save about 99 percent of the library's collection, and none of the historical material was damaged. Because of the disaster, however, about a month passed before American military experts had access to the library's crucial information about the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Survey results
Only 46 percent of the institutions the Heritage Emergency National Task Force surveyed had a written emergency plan and only 42 percent had staff trained in disaster response procedures. Sixty percent of respondents had a current collections catalogue or inventory, but more than half didn't keep any off-site record of their inventory. Had the destruction in Lower Manhattan been more widespread, many collecting institutions would have been left with no complete record of what they'd lost.
"The survey results show that there are significant gaps in preparedness," says Lawrence L. Reger, president of Heritage Preservation. "Quick-thinking staff members who turned off air-intake systems saved valuable collections from corrosive soot and debris. However, more than half the organizations surveyed had only minimal emergency response procedures. Our cultural heritage is vulnerable to potential future disasters."
In fact, 68 percent of respondents said their staffs could benefit from emergency management training, while 67 percent intended to create new emergency plans or revise existing ones. Although the events of September 11 were terrorist acts, rather than the "usual" emergencies, the study found that standard emergency plans and responses worked well and were actually the most effective in dealing with the resulting damage.
Ruth Hargraves, a FEMA official in the Clinton administration, was the project director for the report. As she followed up with survey respondents, she was surprised by the disconnect among groups of staff at some of the institutions. In most instances, Hargraves says, employees in the public affairs departments completed the survey. When she called to clarify a response, however, she was often referred to the security or engineering staff.
"When I asked questions, such as `when did they start to close the air vents' or `what kind of emergency procedures did they follow,' I kept getting a response such as `you need to talk to `Joe," the security guy,"' Hargraves says.
When she finally tracked down "Joe," she often found that he knew more about the institution's emergency preparedness plans than anyone else in the organization but that he was only a part-time volunteer.
The other issues that "shocked" Hargraves was the number of institutions that didn't keep a complete inventory of their collections at an offsite location. Of the responding institutions, 40 percent didn't have an up-to-date inventory, and more than 50 percent of the 60 percent that did have such a list didn't keep a copy of it off-site.
"That's an issue that we've really got to concentrate on," she says.
What we've learned
Based on the survey's findings and extensive follow-up interviews, the report offers some specific recommendations for emergency planning for cultural institutions. Key points include more staff training and complete, current inventories of collections. The report also calls for more effective communication between the emergency management and cultural heritage fields. It encourages professional associations, government agencies, and private foundations concerned about cultural heritage to make disaster management a priority and urges museums, libraries, and archives to begin a dialogue with local emergency officials before disaster strikes.
The report's recommendations are designed to address any type of emergency, and, according to Hargraves, should be adaptable to any cultural institution in the country.
For Allan Fraser, a senior NFPA building code specialist, the report's recommendations, though encouraging, are also frustrating because the tools needed to accomplish many of the report's recommendations existed well before September 11, 2001. He points, in particular, to NFPA 909, Protection of Cultural Resources, and NFPA 914, Fire Protection in Historic Structures.
"The performance-based guidelines in each code allow all kinds of planning between the cultural institutions and the local fire department. And the planning can get quite extensive and detailed," Fraser says.
According to Fraser, cultural institutions in Europe are decades ahead of those in the United States in developing workable plans to protect cultural resources. He cited the example of the enormous Schoenbrunn Castle in Vienna, Austria, where castle staff and the local fire department have worked out a highly detailed emergency plan.
"Not only do they have a plan in place, but they practice it," Fraser says. "In these drills, fire departments respond with six people aboard each piece of equipment. Half the crew starts fire suppression work while the other half goes into the castle and helps castle staff start packing predetermined art objects. Everyone knows exactly where they're going and what they're expected to do. Plans such as this one are in place at museums and other cultural institutions all over Europe."
In Scotland, for instance, fire departments have what he calls a "phenomenal" database tied into computers on fire apparatus. The data tell firefighters what needs to be done when responding to an emergency at any particular cultural institution.
"The database tells you that one particular castle has its own fire pond nearby," Fraser says. "At another, the data will tell you not to put a fire axe through a twelfth-century carved door at the front, but to go through a utility door at the side. It also tells firefighters, if they have to make choices, what they should save first."
Long, of the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, believes the disaster of September 11 was a "wake-up call" to cultural institutions throughout the country.
"The lesson about how the Museum of Jewish Heritage saved its collection hasn't been lost," Long says. "Collecting institutions all over the country are asking for copies of our report. And the need to develop an emergency plan that involves everyone, and then to practice it, is becoming a top priority among the biggest and smallest institutions."
Cultural Heritage Resources for Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Recover
American Institute for Conservation (AIC) Washington, DC (202) 452-9545
AIC provides referrals of conservation professionals to the public. The AIC disaster recovery page is at http://aic.stanford.edu/disaster/.
AMIGOS Library Council Dallas, Texas (800) 843-8482
Amigos Preservation Services (APS) are available to archives and libraries in the Southwestern U.S., primarily the states of Arizona, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, with planning activities and recovery from damage caused by various emergency situations, including natural disasters. Prior to, or following an emergency, APS can provide information, guidance, referrals to local resources and on-site assistance as required.
Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (215) 545-0613
Among its conservation programs, CCAHA provides surveys to assist organizations with preservation planning, workshops and seminars, internships, and emergency assistance.
Heritage Preservation Washington, DC (202) 634-1422
A founding partner of the Heritage Emergency Naltional Task Force.
Library of Congress Preservation Directorate Washington, DC (202) 707-5213
Emergency Drying Procedures for Water Damaged Collections. Concise information, broadly covers air-drying of paper, framed items, books, photographs, and recovery of water-damaged collections with mold.
Emergency Preparedness for Library of Congress Collections. This publication provides detailed guidelines for an emergency preparedness plan. Among the topics covered are risk assessment, communication systems, supplies and training
Minnesota Historical Society
St. Paul, Minnesota, Conservation Department, (651) 297-1867
Information on salvaging personal belongings, historic buildings and government records damaged by natural disasters. National Archives and Records
Administration College Park, Maryland (301) 713-6705
Vital Records and Records Disaster Mitigation and Recovery focuses on identifying and protecting records vital to conducting business under emergency conditions or protecting the legal financial rights of the Federal government. Also recommends policies and procedures for damage assessment and implementation of record recovery.
Northeast Document Conservation Center Andover, Massachusetts (978) 470-1010
A 1999 online Preservation Manual including worksheet for outlining a disaster plan, suppliers list, and salvage information. As part of its Field Service, NEDCC offers emergency assistance for institutions and individuals with damaged paper-based collections. NEDCC provides free telephone advice 24 hours a day if a disaster occurs.
SOLINET
[Sidebar]
Atlanta, Georgia (404) 892-0943
Web site, www.solinet.net, includes Contents of a Disaster Plan, Disaster Recovery Services and Supplies and list of Internet disaster resources.
The Upper Midwest Conservation Association South Minneapolis, Minnesota (612) 870-3120
A nonprofit regional conservation center working in the Upper Midwest. Emergency assistance is a high priority for the Field Services Department. Assistance in emergency preparedness planning is provided in the form of telephone consultations, onsite visits, and workshops. The Field Services Department is available 24 hours a day to assist in emergency response and recovery
BILL FLYNN is a frequent contributor to NFPA Journal.
Flynn, Bill. "Lost art." NFPA Journal. 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-283219871.html
On September 11, 2001, America's loss extended beyond the overwhelming death toll to include countless artistic and historical treasures that can never be replaced
THE TRAGEDY OF September 11, 2001, is second to none in U.S. history, and Americans will forever remember the nearly 3,000 people who died that day. As if the catastrophic loss of life weren't bad enough, the terrorist acts also destroyed millions of dollars worth of art and historical artifacts in New York City and Arlington, Virginia. In fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that property insurance claims alone will eventually reach billions of dollars in what the Insurance Journal has called the largest single insurance disaster in world history.
At the time of the incident, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were home to an estimated $100 million worth of art, historical archives, and artifacts. At least 500 corporations, non-profit organizations, and municipal, state, and federal departments or agencies also stored their records, archives, and libraries in those buildings. At the World Trade Center and nearby buildings alone, the property losses sustained by art and historical institutions are expected to reach tens of millions of dollars. At the Pentagon, which is self-insured, the attack destroyed 24 works of art from the collections of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps and considerably damaged another 40. The Pentagon library, although eventually recovering most of its collection, was out of commission for months after the disaster.
To assess the damage cultural and historic institutions in Lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon, the Heritage Emergency National Task Force commissioned a report entitled "Cataclysm and Challenge: Impact of September 11, 2001 on Our Nation's Cultural Heritage." The report describes the artwork, historical artifacts, archives, and libraries in the seven buildings of the World Trade Center complex and in adjacent buildings, and lists damage to the artwork at the Pentagon and to its library. The report was based, in part, on the results of a survey sent to 122 cultural and historic institutions in or near the World Trade Center aimed at assessing the level of damage they sustained, how prepared they were to cope with disaster, and how they responded in the aftermath of the attacks.
Jane Long, director of the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, says one of the most significant results of the survey was the discovery that collecting institutions need to do a better job planning for continuity of operations.
"The collections of some institutions were completely destroyed," Long says. "Other museums and archives, though, sustained relatively moderate damage initially, but the damage got worse over time because the institutions weren't prepared. It really was a surprising result, but there's a great need to be much more attentive to the continuity of operations following a disaster."
Long says the longer damaged artwork sits without attention, the more likely the damage is to worsen. Mundane issues at many institutions, such as the lack of cleaning equipment or materials needed to stabilize the environment, contributed to damage weeks after the initial attacks.
"It would seem that addressing this aspect of emergency preparedness is something virtually every collecting institution in the country ought to address" Long says.
The Heritage Emergency National Task Force, established in 1995, is a partnership of 34 federal agencies and national non-profit organizations, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Heritage Preservation, Inc. The task force was founded as a result of the 1991 San Francisco earthquake and Hurricane Hugo in 1989 as a way to help libraries, museums, archives, and historical sites protect themselves from natural and other disasters. The task force preaches the need to develop emergency plans, teaches loss-mitigation techniques, and provides expert information on response and salvage when a disaster occurs. The primary financial supporters of the "Cataclysm and Challenge" report were the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Bay Foundation of New York City.
The extent of the losses
Among the artworks destroyed on September 11 were several by world-renowned artists, including Pablo Picasso, David Hockney, Roy Lichenstein, and Ross Bleckner. Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond brokerage firm on the 105th floor of Tower One that lost all its employees working in the building that day, also lost everything in its "museum in the sky" collection, including drawings, casts, and sculptures by the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Reportedly, this privately owned collection was worth millions.
More than 100 works of art owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were also on display in the vast public spaces of the 16-acre (0.16-hectare) World Trade Center complex, including works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Joan Miro, and Masayuki Nagare. Perhaps the most recognizable among them were two huge outdoor sculptures, Fritz Koenig's "Sphere for Plaza Fountain" and James Rosati's "Ideogram." After the attacks, virtually everything inside the buildings was gone, and only the Koenig piece, although badly damaged, survived outside, where it's on display again as a symbol of hope and survival. According to the Heritage Emergency National Task Force report, this public art was worth an estimated $8 million to $10 million. Copies of the report are available at www.heritagepreservation.org/NEWS/ Cataclysm.htm.
The Port Authority also lost archives dating back to the 1920s that documented the construction of many New York City landmarks, including the World Trade Center itself. Among other artifacts that were destroyed were thousands of pieces from an eighteenth-century African burial ground and more than one million artifacts from the nineteenth-century workingclass neighborhood of Five Points.
In spite of these irreplaceable losses, stories of discovery and resourcefulness also emerged. "Bent Propeller," a stabile by Calder, was one of the best-known works of art at the World Trade Center. Officials assumed it had been destroyed along with the hundreds of other pieces, but shortly after the disaster, the artist's grandson, Alexander Rower, began distributing flyers describing the sculpture to recovery workers. Consequently, more than 35 percent of the sculpture has been recovered. Whether it can be reconstituted hasn't yet been determined.
Some cultural institutions near the World Trade Center survived the devastation, either through fate, as in the case of St. Paul's Chapel, or, in the case of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, through sound implementation of an emergency plan.
St. Paul's Chapel, which sits a block north of the World Trade Center site, is the oldest public building in continuous use in Manhattan and its only surviving colonial church. George Washington prayed there before his inauguration, and the first rendition of the Great Seal of the United States hangs above the pew where he knelt. Remarkably, the church survived with little more damage than a thick coating of dust and ash.
Even more inspiring is the story of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City, just south of the World Trade Center. Just minutes after the first jet crashed into Tower One, the museum's fire alarm system began an automatic shutdown of outside air vents. When Lower Manhattan lost power several minutes later and the automated procedures stopped, the museum's engineers climbed onto the roof and manually closed the remaining vents, even as law enforcement began evacuating the area.
Two days later, when a few museum employees were allowed to reenter the building for a quick inspection, they found no damage to the structure or its collection, not even a speck of dust-all because the vents had been properly closed and the water turned off.
Other institutions weren't as lucky or prepared, and many suffered heart-wrenching losses. Two blocks south of the World Trade Center, on West Street, stood the West Street Building, built in 1907 by Cass Gilbert, a prominent architect of the early twentieth century who later designed the Woolworth Building, one of the first true skyscrapers. The West Street Building was the headquarters of the Helen Keller Foundation, and its archives contained rare documents on the causes and treatment of blindness, as well as photographs, historical files, first editions of books, and letters written by Helen Keller. The entire collection about this remarkable woman is gone.
On Cedar Street, a block away from Tower Two of the World Trade Center, stood St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. For nearly a century, this tiny church served the needs of the Orthodox Christian community on Lower Manhattan, housing the relics of St. Nicholas and St. Katherine and a magnificent collection of old gold chalices, candelabra, crosses, and icons. Several of the icons were gifts from Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. On September 11, the church and its contents were demolished. Recovery workers found twisted candelabra and several candles in the debris, the only physical evidence that St. Nicholas Church ever existed.
At the Pentagon, weeks passed before librarians were able to assess the damage to the institution's large military library and archives. Fires fed by jet fuel burned for nearly a week, and the library remained off limits for several more weeks while federal agents conducted their criminal investigation. By the time the librarians were able to return, they found the facility overgrown with toxic mold. Ultimately, library officials were able to save about 99 percent of the library's collection, and none of the historical material was damaged. Because of the disaster, however, about a month passed before American military experts had access to the library's crucial information about the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Survey results
Only 46 percent of the institutions the Heritage Emergency National Task Force surveyed had a written emergency plan and only 42 percent had staff trained in disaster response procedures. Sixty percent of respondents had a current collections catalogue or inventory, but more than half didn't keep any off-site record of their inventory. Had the destruction in Lower Manhattan been more widespread, many collecting institutions would have been left with no complete record of what they'd lost.
"The survey results show that there are significant gaps in preparedness," says Lawrence L. Reger, president of Heritage Preservation. "Quick-thinking staff members who turned off air-intake systems saved valuable collections from corrosive soot and debris. However, more than half the organizations surveyed had only minimal emergency response procedures. Our cultural heritage is vulnerable to potential future disasters."
In fact, 68 percent of respondents said their staffs could benefit from emergency management training, while 67 percent intended to create new emergency plans or revise existing ones. Although the events of September 11 were terrorist acts, rather than the "usual" emergencies, the study found that standard emergency plans and responses worked well and were actually the most effective in dealing with the resulting damage.
Ruth Hargraves, a FEMA official in the Clinton administration, was the project director for the report. As she followed up with survey respondents, she was surprised by the disconnect among groups of staff at some of the institutions. In most instances, Hargraves says, employees in the public affairs departments completed the survey. When she called to clarify a response, however, she was often referred to the security or engineering staff.
"When I asked questions, such as `when did they start to close the air vents' or `what kind of emergency procedures did they follow,' I kept getting a response such as `you need to talk to `Joe," the security guy,"' Hargraves says.
When she finally tracked down "Joe," she often found that he knew more about the institution's emergency preparedness plans than anyone else in the organization but that he was only a part-time volunteer.
The other issues that "shocked" Hargraves was the number of institutions that didn't keep a complete inventory of their collections at an offsite location. Of the responding institutions, 40 percent didn't have an up-to-date inventory, and more than 50 percent of the 60 percent that did have such a list didn't keep a copy of it off-site.
"That's an issue that we've really got to concentrate on," she says.
What we've learned
Based on the survey's findings and extensive follow-up interviews, the report offers some specific recommendations for emergency planning for cultural institutions. Key points include more staff training and complete, current inventories of collections. The report also calls for more effective communication between the emergency management and cultural heritage fields. It encourages professional associations, government agencies, and private foundations concerned about cultural heritage to make disaster management a priority and urges museums, libraries, and archives to begin a dialogue with local emergency officials before disaster strikes.
The report's recommendations are designed to address any type of emergency, and, according to Hargraves, should be adaptable to any cultural institution in the country.
For Allan Fraser, a senior NFPA building code specialist, the report's recommendations, though encouraging, are also frustrating because the tools needed to accomplish many of the report's recommendations existed well before September 11, 2001. He points, in particular, to NFPA 909, Protection of Cultural Resources, and NFPA 914, Fire Protection in Historic Structures.
"The performance-based guidelines in each code allow all kinds of planning between the cultural institutions and the local fire department. And the planning can get quite extensive and detailed," Fraser says.
According to Fraser, cultural institutions in Europe are decades ahead of those in the United States in developing workable plans to protect cultural resources. He cited the example of the enormous Schoenbrunn Castle in Vienna, Austria, where castle staff and the local fire department have worked out a highly detailed emergency plan.
"Not only do they have a plan in place, but they practice it," Fraser says. "In these drills, fire departments respond with six people aboard each piece of equipment. Half the crew starts fire suppression work while the other half goes into the castle and helps castle staff start packing predetermined art objects. Everyone knows exactly where they're going and what they're expected to do. Plans such as this one are in place at museums and other cultural institutions all over Europe."
In Scotland, for instance, fire departments have what he calls a "phenomenal" database tied into computers on fire apparatus. The data tell firefighters what needs to be done when responding to an emergency at any particular cultural institution.
"The database tells you that one particular castle has its own fire pond nearby," Fraser says. "At another, the data will tell you not to put a fire axe through a twelfth-century carved door at the front, but to go through a utility door at the side. It also tells firefighters, if they have to make choices, what they should save first."
Long, of the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, believes the disaster of September 11 was a "wake-up call" to cultural institutions throughout the country.
"The lesson about how the Museum of Jewish Heritage saved its collection hasn't been lost," Long says. "Collecting institutions all over the country are asking for copies of our report. And the need to develop an emergency plan that involves everyone, and then to practice it, is becoming a top priority among the biggest and smallest institutions."
Cultural Heritage Resources for Disaster Preparedness, Response, and Recover
American Institute for Conservation (AIC) Washington, DC (202) 452-9545
AIC provides referrals of conservation professionals to the public. The AIC disaster recovery page is at http://aic.stanford.edu/disaster/.
AMIGOS Library Council Dallas, Texas (800) 843-8482
Amigos Preservation Services (APS) are available to archives and libraries in the Southwestern U.S., primarily the states of Arizona, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, with planning activities and recovery from damage caused by various emergency situations, including natural disasters. Prior to, or following an emergency, APS can provide information, guidance, referrals to local resources and on-site assistance as required.
Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (215) 545-0613
Among its conservation programs, CCAHA provides surveys to assist organizations with preservation planning, workshops and seminars, internships, and emergency assistance.
Heritage Preservation Washington, DC (202) 634-1422
A founding partner of the Heritage Emergency Naltional Task Force.
Library of Congress Preservation Directorate Washington, DC (202) 707-5213
Emergency Drying Procedures for Water Damaged Collections. Concise information, broadly covers air-drying of paper, framed items, books, photographs, and recovery of water-damaged collections with mold.
Emergency Preparedness for Library of Congress Collections. This publication provides detailed guidelines for an emergency preparedness plan. Among the topics covered are risk assessment, communication systems, supplies and training
Minnesota Historical Society
St. Paul, Minnesota, Conservation Department, (651) 297-1867
Information on salvaging personal belongings, historic buildings and government records damaged by natural disasters. National Archives and Records
Administration College Park, Maryland (301) 713-6705
Vital Records and Records Disaster Mitigation and Recovery focuses on identifying and protecting records vital to conducting business under emergency conditions or protecting the legal financial rights of the Federal government. Also recommends policies and procedures for damage assessment and implementation of record recovery.
Northeast Document Conservation Center Andover, Massachusetts (978) 470-1010
A 1999 online Preservation Manual including worksheet for outlining a disaster plan, suppliers list, and salvage information. As part of its Field Service, NEDCC offers emergency assistance for institutions and individuals with damaged paper-based collections. NEDCC provides free telephone advice 24 hours a day if a disaster occurs.
SOLINET
[Sidebar]
Atlanta, Georgia (404) 892-0943
Web site, www.solinet.net, includes Contents of a Disaster Plan, Disaster Recovery Services and Supplies and list of Internet disaster resources.
The Upper Midwest Conservation Association South Minneapolis, Minnesota (612) 870-3120
A nonprofit regional conservation center working in the Upper Midwest. Emergency assistance is a high priority for the Field Services Department. Assistance in emergency preparedness planning is provided in the form of telephone consultations, onsite visits, and workshops. The Field Services Department is available 24 hours a day to assist in emergency response and recovery
BILL FLYNN is a frequent contributor to NFPA Journal.
Flynn, Bill. "Lost art." NFPA Journal. 2003. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-283219871.html
"Cantor Fitzgerald Regains Its Grip,"
September 8, 2002, New York Post, "Cantor Fitzgerald Regains Its Grip,"
-- A bronze hand, missing two fingers and discolored by the inferno that destroyed the World Trade Center, sits in Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick's office.
© NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc. Copyright 2002 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
Original date: Sept. 8, 2002
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=167&ved=0CDAQFjAGOKAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Faccounting.smartpros.com%2Fx35266.xml&ei=qBUzTIDkN4K78gbso8SqAw&usg=AFQjCNFGZwdD87AIpFcMG0qXixbmNFZiOw&sig2=vlWP5Nc8WxtFjgRmCeUIMg">"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=167&ved=0CDAQFjAGOKAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Faccounting.smartpros.com%2Fx35266.xml&ei=qBUzTIDkN4K78gbso8SqAw&usg=AFQjCNFGZwdD87AIpFcMG0qXixbmNFZiOw&sig2=vlWP5Nc8WxtFjgRmCeUIMg">
-- A bronze hand, missing two fingers and discolored by the inferno that destroyed the World Trade Center, sits in Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick's office.
One of several casts made in the early 1990s of company founder Bernie Cantor's palms, the hand that fell a quarter of a mile to earth serves as just one reminder of the horror and human loss from the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
About one-quarter of the more than 2,800 people killed in New York that day worked for the bond broker or one of its subsidiaries.
One year later, Lutnick says, the company has firmly found its grip.
"It was so beyond sadness," said Lutnick, recalling that clear, bright blue September morning.
Cantor, its electronic trading subsidiary eSpeed, and energy unit TradeSpark lost 658 people - every person who had arrived at work by 8:45 a.m., and about two-thirds of its New York staff of 1,050 - before American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower just below Cantor's offices on the 101st through the 105th floors.
Famous for its nepotism, the company lost 20 sets of siblings.
Late getting to work after driving his son to kindergarten, Lutnick scrambled to the base of the north tower and waited in vain to find an employee who made it out. He lost his brother, Gary, and his best friend, Doug Gardner.
"The events of September 11th were unthinkable," Lutnick said.
At his current third-floor offices in a modest Manhattan skyscraper on 57th Street, about 100 stories closer to the ground, Lutnick is relaxed, dressed in a crisp blue Oxford shirt, black slacks, his thinning black hair slicked back.
Another bronze hand in Lutnick's office that survived the World Trade Center catastrophe retains its coal-black color and shine. It was reminiscent of the hue on what was once the world's largest private collection of Rodin sculptures, which was mostly destroyed in the attacks.
Long lionized as one of the toughest traders on Wall Street and demonized in the days shortly after the attacks for swiftly cutting lost employees from company payrolls, Lutnick says he remains fiercely loyal to the families.
"This isn't Harvard Business School analysis, this is the real thing," Lutnick said. "Our friends got killed and of course the people who work here are going to be completely committed to them. What else would they be?"
A promise made to victims' families to pay out 25 percent of Cantor's profits for five years fell on deaf ears to critics who believed the company would fail. But it gave eSpeed workers a clear mission, Lutnick said.
The company, together with additional money raised by the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, will have paid out about $28 million to the families by this Sept. 11. The company has promised to cover health care benefits of the victims' families for 10 years.
But Lutnick does not just beam about the Cantor "family" and the promises he intends to keep. He huffs and puffs about being back in business.
A wide flat-panel screen displays rapid-fire news headlines and frenetic and flickering bond market quotes, as Lutnick bolts up out of his chair to point out eSpeed's stock price. At around $9.40 Friday, the stock trades above where it closed the day before the hijackers destroyed the twin towers.
Miraculously, eSpeed's system was back online two days later and eSpeed turned its first profit in the last three months of 2001. The company has been profitable since.
Cantor, through eSpeed, has also clung to its title as the leading middleman between big banks and securities firms in the $3 trillion U.S. government bond market.
Reviled in the past by those who suggested he aggressively seized control of the company in 1996 from his mentor Bernie Cantor when Cantor was ill, Lutnick says Sept. 11 transformed him into a fund-raiser and part-time counselor.
"Did I change? Of course. But the direction I went was the only one that my heart and my mind would let me go," Lutnick said.
Lutnick points to a framed montage posted on his office wall of eSpeed's top management, prepared before Sept. 11 for an annual report package but never published.
Lutnick says he now spends Thursday and Sunday nights with Michael Gardner, Doug's son, together with his own son. Lutnick's wife, Allison, organizes monthly gatherings of the 46 fiancees who lost their partners-to-be and the 38 women who had babies since the attacks.
"It will forever hurt," Lutnick says, sinking down a bit in his chair, the ends of his fingers touching one another below his chin. "It will be a nightmare that will never go away."
Reuters
About one-quarter of the more than 2,800 people killed in New York that day worked for the bond broker or one of its subsidiaries.
One year later, Lutnick says, the company has firmly found its grip.
"It was so beyond sadness," said Lutnick, recalling that clear, bright blue September morning.
Cantor, its electronic trading subsidiary eSpeed, and energy unit TradeSpark lost 658 people - every person who had arrived at work by 8:45 a.m., and about two-thirds of its New York staff of 1,050 - before American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower just below Cantor's offices on the 101st through the 105th floors.
Famous for its nepotism, the company lost 20 sets of siblings.
Late getting to work after driving his son to kindergarten, Lutnick scrambled to the base of the north tower and waited in vain to find an employee who made it out. He lost his brother, Gary, and his best friend, Doug Gardner.
"The events of September 11th were unthinkable," Lutnick said.
At his current third-floor offices in a modest Manhattan skyscraper on 57th Street, about 100 stories closer to the ground, Lutnick is relaxed, dressed in a crisp blue Oxford shirt, black slacks, his thinning black hair slicked back.
Another bronze hand in Lutnick's office that survived the World Trade Center catastrophe retains its coal-black color and shine. It was reminiscent of the hue on what was once the world's largest private collection of Rodin sculptures, which was mostly destroyed in the attacks.
Long lionized as one of the toughest traders on Wall Street and demonized in the days shortly after the attacks for swiftly cutting lost employees from company payrolls, Lutnick says he remains fiercely loyal to the families.
"This isn't Harvard Business School analysis, this is the real thing," Lutnick said. "Our friends got killed and of course the people who work here are going to be completely committed to them. What else would they be?"
A promise made to victims' families to pay out 25 percent of Cantor's profits for five years fell on deaf ears to critics who believed the company would fail. But it gave eSpeed workers a clear mission, Lutnick said.
The company, together with additional money raised by the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, will have paid out about $28 million to the families by this Sept. 11. The company has promised to cover health care benefits of the victims' families for 10 years.
But Lutnick does not just beam about the Cantor "family" and the promises he intends to keep. He huffs and puffs about being back in business.
A wide flat-panel screen displays rapid-fire news headlines and frenetic and flickering bond market quotes, as Lutnick bolts up out of his chair to point out eSpeed's stock price. At around $9.40 Friday, the stock trades above where it closed the day before the hijackers destroyed the twin towers.
Miraculously, eSpeed's system was back online two days later and eSpeed turned its first profit in the last three months of 2001. The company has been profitable since.
Cantor, through eSpeed, has also clung to its title as the leading middleman between big banks and securities firms in the $3 trillion U.S. government bond market.
Reviled in the past by those who suggested he aggressively seized control of the company in 1996 from his mentor Bernie Cantor when Cantor was ill, Lutnick says Sept. 11 transformed him into a fund-raiser and part-time counselor.
"Did I change? Of course. But the direction I went was the only one that my heart and my mind would let me go," Lutnick said.
Lutnick points to a framed montage posted on his office wall of eSpeed's top management, prepared before Sept. 11 for an annual report package but never published.
Lutnick says he now spends Thursday and Sunday nights with Michael Gardner, Doug's son, together with his own son. Lutnick's wife, Allison, organizes monthly gatherings of the 46 fiancees who lost their partners-to-be and the 38 women who had babies since the attacks.
"It will forever hurt," Lutnick says, sinking down a bit in his chair, the ends of his fingers touching one another below his chin. "It will be a nightmare that will never go away."
Reuters
© NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc. Copyright 2002 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
Original date: Sept. 8, 2002
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=167&ved=0CDAQFjAGOKAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Faccounting.smartpros.com%2Fx35266.xml&ei=qBUzTIDkN4K78gbso8SqAw&usg=AFQjCNFGZwdD87AIpFcMG0qXixbmNFZiOw&sig2=vlWP5Nc8WxtFjgRmCeUIMg">"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=167&ved=0CDAQFjAGOKAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Faccounting.smartpros.com%2Fx35266.xml&ei=qBUzTIDkN4K78gbso8SqAw&usg=AFQjCNFGZwdD87AIpFcMG0qXixbmNFZiOw&sig2=vlWP5Nc8WxtFjgRmCeUIMg">
"Witness: September 11 tribute Remains of a day of devastation..."
September 8, 2002, Sunday Mail (Glasgow, Scotland) , "Witness: September 11 tribute Remains of a day of devastation; The world's fifth and sixth tallest buildings were crushed into 1.6 million tons of smoking concrete and steel, a tomb for 2801 innocent victims. The statistics compiled during the painstaking recovery operation tell their own horrific story,"
[Also published in Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020909/anumbers.html ]
6 years, 8 months
Time it took to build the World Trade Center, from 1966 to 1973.
1 hour, 42 minutes
Time it took to destroy the towers, from the first impact to the second collapse.
180 mph
Speed at which a Boeing 707 could hit the towers but still not destroy them, under the official engineering plan.
475 mph and 595 mph
Estimated flight speeds of the two Boeing 767 jets which hit the towers.
0.9
Magnitude on the Richter scale of the earthquake-like tremor caused by Flight 11 hitting the North Tower.
2.3
Magnitude of the tremor caused by the collapse of the North Tower.
980 degrees C
Estimated temperature of the fires ignited by the jet fuel.
550 degrees C
Temperature at which steel loses half its strength. It melts at about 1370 degrees C.
60
Police officers killed - 37 Port Authority and 23 NYPD.
343
New York firefighters killed; 60 were off duty.
658
Cantor Fitzgerald employees killed.
10
Bystanders killed by falling debris.
19,858
Body parts recovered from the site; 4598 have been identified.
10.5
Tons of gold recovered from the Bank of Nova Scotia vault (current value; pounds 79million).
3
Auguste Rodin sculptures recovered from the rubble.
144
Rings among the 65,000 personal items recovered from Ground Zero. Other items include 437 watches, 77 necklaces, 119 earrings and 80 bracelets.
4
Autographed baseballs found.
16
People who escaped the South Tower from above the floors where the plane hit.
0
People who escaped the North Tower from above the floors where the plane hit.
18
Survivors found in rubble: 12 firefighters, three police officers, three civilians. All were found by September 12.
92
Bomb threats phoned in to police in New York City on September 11.
6
Looting arrests in New York on September 11.
pounds 2.6billion to pounds 4billion
Expected total payout of government compensation to victims' families.
pounds 1,490,664
Government estimate of the value of a 25-year-old man with one child, earning pounds 35,000 a year at the time of his death.
pounds 960,000
Average payment to first 25 families who applied.
1350
The number of vehicles crushed under the falling towers. They ended up in a mound at Staten Island's Fresh Kills landfill.
76 per cent
New York school pupils who reported that, six months later, they still thought frequently about September 11.
3.6 million
Estimated number of tourists who will have visited Ground Zero by the end of this year.
6400
American flags sold by Wal-Mart on September 11, 2000.
116,000
American flags sold by Wal-Mart on September 11, 2001.
"Witness: September 11 tribute Remains of a day of devastation; The world's fifth and sixth tallest buildings were crushed into 1.6 million tons of smoking concrete and steel, a tomb for 2801 innocent victims. The statistics compiled during the painstaking recovery operation tell their own horrific story.(Witness September 11 tribute)." Sunday Mail (Glasgow, Scotland). 2002. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-91181969.html
[Also published in Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020909/anumbers.html ]
6 years, 8 months
Time it took to build the World Trade Center, from 1966 to 1973.
1 hour, 42 minutes
Time it took to destroy the towers, from the first impact to the second collapse.
180 mph
Speed at which a Boeing 707 could hit the towers but still not destroy them, under the official engineering plan.
475 mph and 595 mph
Estimated flight speeds of the two Boeing 767 jets which hit the towers.
0.9
Magnitude on the Richter scale of the earthquake-like tremor caused by Flight 11 hitting the North Tower.
2.3
Magnitude of the tremor caused by the collapse of the North Tower.
980 degrees C
Estimated temperature of the fires ignited by the jet fuel.
550 degrees C
Temperature at which steel loses half its strength. It melts at about 1370 degrees C.
60
Police officers killed - 37 Port Authority and 23 NYPD.
343
New York firefighters killed; 60 were off duty.
658
Cantor Fitzgerald employees killed.
10
Bystanders killed by falling debris.
19,858
Body parts recovered from the site; 4598 have been identified.
10.5
Tons of gold recovered from the Bank of Nova Scotia vault (current value; pounds 79million).
3
Auguste Rodin sculptures recovered from the rubble.
144
Rings among the 65,000 personal items recovered from Ground Zero. Other items include 437 watches, 77 necklaces, 119 earrings and 80 bracelets.
4
Autographed baseballs found.
16
People who escaped the South Tower from above the floors where the plane hit.
0
People who escaped the North Tower from above the floors where the plane hit.
18
Survivors found in rubble: 12 firefighters, three police officers, three civilians. All were found by September 12.
92
Bomb threats phoned in to police in New York City on September 11.
6
Looting arrests in New York on September 11.
pounds 2.6billion to pounds 4billion
Expected total payout of government compensation to victims' families.
pounds 1,490,664
Government estimate of the value of a 25-year-old man with one child, earning pounds 35,000 a year at the time of his death.
pounds 960,000
Average payment to first 25 families who applied.
1350
The number of vehicles crushed under the falling towers. They ended up in a mound at Staten Island's Fresh Kills landfill.
76 per cent
New York school pupils who reported that, six months later, they still thought frequently about September 11.
3.6 million
Estimated number of tourists who will have visited Ground Zero by the end of this year.
6400
American flags sold by Wal-Mart on September 11, 2000.
116,000
American flags sold by Wal-Mart on September 11, 2001.
"Witness: September 11 tribute Remains of a day of devastation; The world's fifth and sixth tallest buildings were crushed into 1.6 million tons of smoking concrete and steel, a tomb for 2801 innocent victims. The statistics compiled during the painstaking recovery operation tell their own horrific story.(Witness September 11 tribute)." Sunday Mail (Glasgow, Scotland). 2002. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-91181969.html
"Out of this has come a community," by Theresa Tedesco,
September 7, 2002, National Post, "Out of this has come a community," by Theresa Tedesco, (Financial Post),
The reminders are constant: the memories like glowing embers that burn hot and slow in the mind of Howard Lutnick.
The 41-year-old chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald LP emerged as one of the most unforgettable and controversial figures in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Sept. 11.
The brash treasury bond trader with the slicked-back hair, who had seemed the embodiment of the financial might of New York, had been reduced to public displays of sobbing. At times, he appeared overcome with grief and guilt.
"It was a nightmare and when we wake up every morning, it's still there," he said, in an interview with the Financial Post this week in his midtown Manhattan office. "At Cantor Fitzgerald, our hearts were ripped apart and the remnants are still there. From the minute I wake up to the last moment before I go to sleep, it's in my every waking moment. There is nothing in-between."
Sitting in his corner office, about a hundred blocks north of the scene of the carnage, Mr. Lutnick is relatively composed heading into the first anniversary of the attacks. A Rodin sculpture of a hand, with three fingers missing, sits on a desk, recovered from the rubble at Ground Zero.
Cantor Fitzgerald's new U.S. headquarters are modest, 80,000 square feet over five floors in a decidedly low-brow building. Mr. Lutnick's office is on the third floor.
"Did we do that on purpose?" he asks, anticipating the obvious question. "You're darn right we did."
His day began at breakfast with one of the families who lost a loved one employed at Cantor Fitzgerald. By the end of the day, Mr. Lutnick will have had similar meetings with at least two other grieving families. For the past year, his routine has been an average of three meetings or telephone chats a day, each at a minimum of 20 minutes, and his rule is that he never hangs up first.
"There's so many," he says, rattling off the casualty statistics by rote---658 employees perished, or two-thirds of the company's 1,050 employees in New York. He hired about 200 of them personally.
Among the fatalities, 165 senior partners at the firm; his 36-year-old brother, Gary; 20 family pairings; 48 others who had been engaged to be married.
http://business.highbeam.com/435424/article-1G1-94666176/out-has-come-community
The reminders are constant: the memories like glowing embers that burn hot and slow in the mind of Howard Lutnick.
The 41-year-old chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald LP emerged as one of the most unforgettable and controversial figures in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Sept. 11.
The brash treasury bond trader with the slicked-back hair, who had seemed the embodiment of the financial might of New York, had been reduced to public displays of sobbing. At times, he appeared overcome with grief and guilt.
"It was a nightmare and when we wake up every morning, it's still there," he said, in an interview with the Financial Post this week in his midtown Manhattan office. "At Cantor Fitzgerald, our hearts were ripped apart and the remnants are still there. From the minute I wake up to the last moment before I go to sleep, it's in my every waking moment. There is nothing in-between."
Sitting in his corner office, about a hundred blocks north of the scene of the carnage, Mr. Lutnick is relatively composed heading into the first anniversary of the attacks. A Rodin sculpture of a hand, with three fingers missing, sits on a desk, recovered from the rubble at Ground Zero.
Cantor Fitzgerald's new U.S. headquarters are modest, 80,000 square feet over five floors in a decidedly low-brow building. Mr. Lutnick's office is on the third floor.
"Did we do that on purpose?" he asks, anticipating the obvious question. "You're darn right we did."
His day began at breakfast with one of the families who lost a loved one employed at Cantor Fitzgerald. By the end of the day, Mr. Lutnick will have had similar meetings with at least two other grieving families. For the past year, his routine has been an average of three meetings or telephone chats a day, each at a minimum of 20 minutes, and his rule is that he never hangs up first.
"There's so many," he says, rattling off the casualty statistics by rote---658 employees perished, or two-thirds of the company's 1,050 employees in New York. He hired about 200 of them personally.
Among the fatalities, 165 senior partners at the firm; his 36-year-old brother, Gary; 20 family pairings; 48 others who had been engaged to be married.
http://business.highbeam.com/435424/article-1G1-94666176/out-has-come-community
"Sept. 11: Art Destroyed, Created in NYC," by Frederick W. Winship,
September 5, 2002, United Press International, "Sept. 11: Art Destroyed, Created in NYC," by Frederick W. Winship,
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-67146966.html
NEW YORK -- The collapse of the World Trade Center towers last Sept. 11 destroyed paintings and sculpture valued at as much as $100 million but also gave birth to a new form of art inspired by the terrorist attacks.
While insurance companies are still processing claims for fine art losses, some of the city's museums are collecting material from the Ground Zero site and photographs of the catastrophe for exhibition now and in the future. The New York Historical Society initiated this new display category last November with a show titled "New York September 11 by Magnum Photographers," a selection of the photo agency's video and still photography of the event.
Most of the art that was virtually atomized in the fiery collapse of the Twin Towers belonged to companies with offices in these buildings and several peripheral structures that were damaged. But some of the most important works had been created to beautify the World Trade Center and its plaza when they were completed in the early 1970s.
The plaza centerpiece was a large polished brass globe by Fritz Koenig, which miraculously escaped destruction although it suffered damage. It has been removed to a city park site at Broadway and Battery Place for display in its battered condition as a memorial to the Sept. 11 tragedy and may eventually be returned to the Twin Towers site when it is rebuilt, according to a City Parks Department spokesman.
Another public art object, "Modern Head," a 30-foot sculpture by Roy Lichtenstein was also found in the ruins and is currently being restored, but none of the other commissioned pieces were found. These include another Lichtenstein, a painting from his "Entablature" series of the 1970s, Alexander Calder's 25-foot "Red Stabile (1991)," Louise Nevelson's "Sky Gate, New York," a 1975 painted wood relief, and Joan Miro's " 1974 "World Trade Center Tapestry" designed for the No. 2 Tower mezzanine.
Other important corporate art collections destroyed were those of the Cantor Fitzgerald investment company, Deutsch Bank, the Merrill Lynch brokerage, and Fred Alger Management, another investment firm.
Most of the companies in the World Trade Center complex collected contemporary art but Cantor Fitzgerald was noted for its collection of bronzes by the great 19th century French sculptor, Auguste Rodin, whose work was avidly collected by the firm's late founder, George B. Cantor. One of the memorable photographs of the disaster site showed a shattered leg and foot from one of Cantor Fitzgerald's Rodins.
"These losses have been a very touchy subject, what with putting an evaluation on the lost pieces and making insurance claims," said Judi Jedlicka, president of Business Committee for the Arts, Inc., a non- profit group that links companies to the arts. "No one wants to talk about it, really, perhaps because the loss of life at the World Trade Center was much the greater loss."
Dietrich von Frank of AXA Nordstern Art Insurance, one of the major insurers of the lost art, estimated that as many as 400 companies suffered losses of art.
"I wouldn't be surprised if in the end these losses were in the range of $100 million," he said. "There are a few companies with losses in the tens of millions."
One monument in granite from the center's plaza that was shattered but retrieved was the memorial sculpted by Elyn Zimmerman to commemorate the six lives lost in the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Zimmerman said the fragments of the memorial, which was part of a fountain installation into which visitors tossed coins for good luck, will eventually be installed in a museum.
The Museum of the City of New York and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History have taken the lead in collecting and preserving artifacts and images that document Sept. 11, and some 33 museums and other institutions around the country have come up with suggestions that are now being acted on or evaluated. Many artifacts already have been stored away for future display.
One of the outstanding exhibits so far is the Museum of the City of New York's "Manhattan Skyline" that included a number of images of the Twin Towers, including a 1992 folding screen in the Japanese style by Jonathan Shackleton showing the towers picked out in indigo on a gold leaf ground beneath a silver moon.
Other exhibits have been mounted by the International Center for Photography, the Bronx River Art Center, and a number of private galleries in Manhattan's SoHo and the East Village. A dozen wall murals depicting Sept. 11 by virtually unknown artists have cropped up around the city, the most striking one on a block-long wall facing the Long Island Expressway in Queens featuring four firemen raising a flag, a giant eagle, and the face of Miss Liberty.
(This article is part of UPI's Special Package on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks).
"SEPT. 11: ART DESTROYED, CREATED IN NYC." United Press International. 2002. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-67146966.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-67146966.html
NEW YORK -- The collapse of the World Trade Center towers last Sept. 11 destroyed paintings and sculpture valued at as much as $100 million but also gave birth to a new form of art inspired by the terrorist attacks.
While insurance companies are still processing claims for fine art losses, some of the city's museums are collecting material from the Ground Zero site and photographs of the catastrophe for exhibition now and in the future. The New York Historical Society initiated this new display category last November with a show titled "New York September 11 by Magnum Photographers," a selection of the photo agency's video and still photography of the event.
Most of the art that was virtually atomized in the fiery collapse of the Twin Towers belonged to companies with offices in these buildings and several peripheral structures that were damaged. But some of the most important works had been created to beautify the World Trade Center and its plaza when they were completed in the early 1970s.
The plaza centerpiece was a large polished brass globe by Fritz Koenig, which miraculously escaped destruction although it suffered damage. It has been removed to a city park site at Broadway and Battery Place for display in its battered condition as a memorial to the Sept. 11 tragedy and may eventually be returned to the Twin Towers site when it is rebuilt, according to a City Parks Department spokesman.
Another public art object, "Modern Head," a 30-foot sculpture by Roy Lichtenstein was also found in the ruins and is currently being restored, but none of the other commissioned pieces were found. These include another Lichtenstein, a painting from his "Entablature" series of the 1970s, Alexander Calder's 25-foot "Red Stabile (1991)," Louise Nevelson's "Sky Gate, New York," a 1975 painted wood relief, and Joan Miro's " 1974 "World Trade Center Tapestry" designed for the No. 2 Tower mezzanine.
Other important corporate art collections destroyed were those of the Cantor Fitzgerald investment company, Deutsch Bank, the Merrill Lynch brokerage, and Fred Alger Management, another investment firm.
Most of the companies in the World Trade Center complex collected contemporary art but Cantor Fitzgerald was noted for its collection of bronzes by the great 19th century French sculptor, Auguste Rodin, whose work was avidly collected by the firm's late founder, George B. Cantor. One of the memorable photographs of the disaster site showed a shattered leg and foot from one of Cantor Fitzgerald's Rodins.
"These losses have been a very touchy subject, what with putting an evaluation on the lost pieces and making insurance claims," said Judi Jedlicka, president of Business Committee for the Arts, Inc., a non- profit group that links companies to the arts. "No one wants to talk about it, really, perhaps because the loss of life at the World Trade Center was much the greater loss."
Dietrich von Frank of AXA Nordstern Art Insurance, one of the major insurers of the lost art, estimated that as many as 400 companies suffered losses of art.
"I wouldn't be surprised if in the end these losses were in the range of $100 million," he said. "There are a few companies with losses in the tens of millions."
One monument in granite from the center's plaza that was shattered but retrieved was the memorial sculpted by Elyn Zimmerman to commemorate the six lives lost in the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Zimmerman said the fragments of the memorial, which was part of a fountain installation into which visitors tossed coins for good luck, will eventually be installed in a museum.
The Museum of the City of New York and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History have taken the lead in collecting and preserving artifacts and images that document Sept. 11, and some 33 museums and other institutions around the country have come up with suggestions that are now being acted on or evaluated. Many artifacts already have been stored away for future display.
One of the outstanding exhibits so far is the Museum of the City of New York's "Manhattan Skyline" that included a number of images of the Twin Towers, including a 1992 folding screen in the Japanese style by Jonathan Shackleton showing the towers picked out in indigo on a gold leaf ground beneath a silver moon.
Other exhibits have been mounted by the International Center for Photography, the Bronx River Art Center, and a number of private galleries in Manhattan's SoHo and the East Village. A dozen wall murals depicting Sept. 11 by virtually unknown artists have cropped up around the city, the most striking one on a block-long wall facing the Long Island Expressway in Queens featuring four firemen raising a flag, a giant eagle, and the face of Miss Liberty.
(This article is part of UPI's Special Package on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks).
"SEPT. 11: ART DESTROYED, CREATED IN NYC." United Press International. 2002. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-67146966.html
"Sept. 11 cultural losses tallied," by Alpert I. Lukas,
June 4, 2002, AP / (Bergen County, NJ) Record, "Sept. 11 cultural losses tallied," by Alpert I. Lukas,
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-53395227.html
"Sept. 11 cultural losses tallied -- Twin Towers held big historical trove,"
[Exact verbatim article as the June 4, AP Online, "Report Details Artifacts Lost 9-11," by Alpert I. Lukas,]
NEW YORK - First editions of Helen Keller's books. Sculptures by Auguste Rodin. Artifacts from the African Burial Ground. Thousands of photographs of Broadway, off-Broadway, and even off-off-Broadway shows.
All were lost - along with thousands of other important works of art, photographs, negatives, artifacts, and historical documents - when the World Trade Center towers collapsed, a new report shows.
"In emergencies, sometimes there is simply nothing you can do," said Lawrence L. Reger, president of the group that released the report. "There was stuff put in vaults that were simply vaporized."
The report, by Heritage Preservation, a Washington, D.C.-based cultural preservation organization, surveyed 57 museums, archives, and cultural institutions close to the trade center site. It focused on the scope of what was lost in lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Within and around the Twin Towers were some of the world's best-known pieces of art, such as Fritz Koenig's "The Sphere" and the Rodin collection in the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading firm that lost 658 of its nearly 1,000 employees on Sept. 11.
The Koenig sculpture, which sat in the concourse between the towers, was badly damaged and now serves as part of a temporary memorial in nearby Battery Park.
"It was next to a miracle that the Koenig sphere survived in any way, " Reger said.
But most of the Rodins did not survive. Those that did were badly damaged.
Aside from the works of art, thousands of important historical photographs and documents also were lost.
Almost the complete Port Authority of New York and New Jersey archive of papers, photographs, and blueprints detailing the construction of the World Trade Center and dozens of other city landmarks was destroyed.
Nearly 40,000 of photographer Jacques Lowe's negatives, detailing John F. Kennedy's presidency, were lost when 5 World Trade Center was heavily damaged in the attack, destroying the bank vault where they were stored. Lowe's family estimated that the negatives were worth nearly $2 million.
"Most people did not think that the World Trade towers had such a variety and such a wide breadth of historical items," Reger said.
But the Heritage Preservation report also showed that hundreds of thousands more items were saved by quick thinking and well-thought- out emergency plans.
"The good news is that people really took common-sense action, and that helped save quite a lot," Reger said. "Most of those who did that had some kind of plan, but we do think too many institutions don't have proper planning."
Reger said museums and archivists can learn a lesson by looking at how some cultural institutions within the disaster area managed to safeguard their collections. For example, just across the street from where the towers once stood, administrators at the Museum of Jewish Heritage had to climb to the roof and manually crank the vents closed when power was lost. As the towers burned in the background, they stayed to turn off water valves, despite being ordered to leave by the police.
When they returned, not a trace of dust - which can be lethal to artifacts - was found inside the museum, despite all of lower Manhattan's being covered in a thick layer of it.
Illustrations/Photos: PHOTO - ASSOCIATED PRESS - Fritz Koenig's "The Sphere" in the rubble of the World Trade Center in September. It had been in the concourse between the towers. Keywords: NEW YORK CITY, BUILDING, DISASTER, ART
LUKAS I. ALPERT, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. "Sept. 11 cultural losses tallied." The Record (Bergen County, NJ). 2002. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-53395227.html
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-53395227.html
"Sept. 11 cultural losses tallied -- Twin Towers held big historical trove,"
[Exact verbatim article as the June 4, AP Online, "Report Details Artifacts Lost 9-11," by Alpert I. Lukas,]
NEW YORK - First editions of Helen Keller's books. Sculptures by Auguste Rodin. Artifacts from the African Burial Ground. Thousands of photographs of Broadway, off-Broadway, and even off-off-Broadway shows.
All were lost - along with thousands of other important works of art, photographs, negatives, artifacts, and historical documents - when the World Trade Center towers collapsed, a new report shows.
"In emergencies, sometimes there is simply nothing you can do," said Lawrence L. Reger, president of the group that released the report. "There was stuff put in vaults that were simply vaporized."
The report, by Heritage Preservation, a Washington, D.C.-based cultural preservation organization, surveyed 57 museums, archives, and cultural institutions close to the trade center site. It focused on the scope of what was lost in lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Within and around the Twin Towers were some of the world's best-known pieces of art, such as Fritz Koenig's "The Sphere" and the Rodin collection in the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading firm that lost 658 of its nearly 1,000 employees on Sept. 11.
The Koenig sculpture, which sat in the concourse between the towers, was badly damaged and now serves as part of a temporary memorial in nearby Battery Park.
"It was next to a miracle that the Koenig sphere survived in any way, " Reger said.
But most of the Rodins did not survive. Those that did were badly damaged.
Aside from the works of art, thousands of important historical photographs and documents also were lost.
Almost the complete Port Authority of New York and New Jersey archive of papers, photographs, and blueprints detailing the construction of the World Trade Center and dozens of other city landmarks was destroyed.
Nearly 40,000 of photographer Jacques Lowe's negatives, detailing John F. Kennedy's presidency, were lost when 5 World Trade Center was heavily damaged in the attack, destroying the bank vault where they were stored. Lowe's family estimated that the negatives were worth nearly $2 million.
"Most people did not think that the World Trade towers had such a variety and such a wide breadth of historical items," Reger said.
But the Heritage Preservation report also showed that hundreds of thousands more items were saved by quick thinking and well-thought- out emergency plans.
"The good news is that people really took common-sense action, and that helped save quite a lot," Reger said. "Most of those who did that had some kind of plan, but we do think too many institutions don't have proper planning."
Reger said museums and archivists can learn a lesson by looking at how some cultural institutions within the disaster area managed to safeguard their collections. For example, just across the street from where the towers once stood, administrators at the Museum of Jewish Heritage had to climb to the roof and manually crank the vents closed when power was lost. As the towers burned in the background, they stayed to turn off water valves, despite being ordered to leave by the police.
When they returned, not a trace of dust - which can be lethal to artifacts - was found inside the museum, despite all of lower Manhattan's being covered in a thick layer of it.
Illustrations/Photos: PHOTO - ASSOCIATED PRESS - Fritz Koenig's "The Sphere" in the rubble of the World Trade Center in September. It had been in the concourse between the towers. Keywords: NEW YORK CITY, BUILDING, DISASTER, ART
LUKAS I. ALPERT, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. "Sept. 11 cultural losses tallied." The Record (Bergen County, NJ). 2002. HighBeam Research. (October 3, 2010). http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-53395227.html
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