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urban blogger misrepresentation attended this meeting and provides lucid commentary :
And there is no doubt that is the case. A fascinating moment of total implosion occurred when a family member came up and read mostly disingenuous statement that seemed like it came directly from the Machiavellian mind of Debra Burlingame. We heard the usual garbage talking points about “it’s not about the arts, but the kind of the arts” followed by a litany of projects that, absent the loaded emotional context from which they were drawn, would have resulted in pained eye-rolling from most everyone there (and probably still did for some). There were glimmers of a viable argument, via pandering to positioning these examples of outsider art (that might be welcomed at places like MAD or the American Folk Museum), or terms that might indict the clannishness of the arts we were lamenting the exclusion of. But no one rose to point out that the some 30-odd examples offered, from a traditional curatorial viewpoint, were infinitesimal for an institution that needs to fill programming for a century (MoMA has what, 100,000 items in inventory?), and the Memorial is already slated to have something on the order of 200,000 sf of display space. I'm not aware of anyone recommending that the Memorial Center -- or whatever we are calling it nowdays -- not include such times. But, true to form, no one wanted to attack a family member by pointing any of this out, or, worse, the awkward, polite disinterest indicated that, yes, this is even less a dialogue than anyone presumes.
Controversy Still Clouds Prospects at 9/11 Site
By ROBIN POGREBIN for nyt
Published: December 14, 2005
A sense of despair about the prospects for cultural activity at ground zero pervaded a panel discussion on the issue on Monday night, even as some speakers suggested that the idea could be resurrected.
"Is there hope?" asked the artist Hans Haacke, one of five panelists on the dais in an auditorium packed with 250 people at the New School. "I would say no."
"Culture is never unideological," he added. "There is no one culture that everybody agrees on."
The two-hour event, centering on the question "What's Happening to the Arts at Ground Zero?," was organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the New School's Vera List Center for Art and Politics. (cont.)