INTRODUCTION

Donald M. Reynolds

Welcome

    Welcome to our thirteenth annual symposium on public monuments.

     Each year, we pay homage to the renowned art historian Rudolf Wittkower, who fled Nazi Germany and established one of the twentieth century’s most illustrious academic careers here in New York City at Columbia University.

     One of Wittkower’s greatest legacies that invites our reflection during these troubled times was his spirit of dialogue and collaborative inquiry, which infused his work throughout his life.

     From fifteenth-century painting to the history of Baroque sculpture and architecture, Wittkower’s spirit of collaborative scholarship dates from his very first publications.  In fact, his first five books were the work of collaboration.  And it was characteristic that he wrote two books, “Born Under Saturn” (1963) and “The Divine Michelangelo” (1964), with his wife Margot, his lifetime helpmate and partner.

     In Wittkower’s obituary, his student, protégé, and friend, Howard Hibbard, wrote, “Rudolf Wittkower was the ideal teacher.  Perhaps his outstanding quality was faith.  He saw  talent where others did not, and carefully nourished it.  More than anyone I have ever known with such high ambitions, he was able to divert his energies to the common good.  The loss of the scholar and administrator is, for his countless friends, dwarfed by the disappearance of what we valued most, his unique humanity.”

     This symposium, which pays tribute to Rudolf Wittkower each year is made possible by the generosity of the late Samuel Dorsky and the Dorsky Foundation through his daughter and two sons: Karen, David, and Noah Dorsky.

     Sam Dorsky’s crowning achievement was the life he led.  All of his other achievements derived from that.

     The son of immigrant Russian Jews, Sam became a success in the garment business and in the world of art.  He supported artists in any number of ways and contributed works of art to universities and colleges.  Just two years ago, the Samuel Dorsky Museum opened at the State University of New York, New Paltz campus, providing students, faculty, and the public with ongoing riches of the visual arts.

     Rudolf Wittkower and Sam Dorsky.  Two remarkable men from entirely different walks of life, who never met, but who had much in common in their wisdom and caring, bring us together each year.

     We hold the symposium on or near the first day of spring, symbolic of regeneration.  The earliest monuments from prehistoric times, and many since then, deal with notions of rebirth and renewal.  So, through this symposium each spring, we celebrate renewal of the wisdom and caring that characterized the lives of Rudolf Wittkower and Sam Dorsky.

     The theme of the symposium in the two years before the tragedy of September 11, 2001, was dialogue and reconciliation among Christians, Muslims, and Jews.  In the year 2000, we looked back over the past thousand years of that history, and the following year, we looked ahead toward the new millennium with hope for the future of reconciliation and dialogue among Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

     None of us realized then, I’m sure, just how prescient was our reflection on the dialogue and reconciliation among those different religions and cultures or how relevant it was and is to our very survival.  Just as now none of us can doubt the importance of developing mutual understanding among the many cultures of the world, if we are to survive.

     Three years ago, Hellmut Wohl, who spoke in the symposium last year, sent me a volume of talks from a symposium held in 1995, called “Monuments for an Age Without Heroes.”  In the Preface, Claudio Veliz, Director of the University Professors at Boston University and the editor of the volume, wrote, “The western cultural tradition has seldom shown itself [to be] so unimpressed by heroes and diffident about monuments as in our own times.”

     How things have changed since 9/11.

     Once again, we are reminded of the extraordinary heroism of literally thousands of people who perished, survived, or in any number of ways were and are a part of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and its aftermath.

     How do we commemorate the heroes and the entire experience of 9/11 at a time when we are threatened not only by the technological capability of annihilation but also by the cultural climate to bring it about?

Lest We Forget 9/11: Bonds of Tragedy and Mutual Understanding

     Once we accept the reality that annihilating ourselves is an increasingly imminent possibility, perhaps then we will take steps to prevent its inevitability.

     One step proposed by Oleg Grabar, Emeritus Professor of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, is to build bridges of mutual understanding between the many cultures of the world through a series of ongoing seminars.

     Participants would be scholars and students, all from different countries and cultures, who would share their views on selected topics of history, culture, belief, behavior, art, music, health, and politics, thereby addressing the ignorance and the hatred that contributed to the tragedy of 9/11.

      Under the common heading, “Being Understood by Others and Understanding Others,” these international and multi-cultural seminars would be living memorials to the almost 3,000 innocent victims from more than eighty countries, who perished on 9/11, the survivors, and the dedicated rescuers.

     Small seminars of 25 people (17 or 18 students and 7 or 8 faculty) would be held three times a year for a week each time in a different place studying a culture or aspect of a culture.

     Over a period of five years some 120 young leaders and students from a dozen countries or more would have tried to explain to each other who and what they are and what they know, what they would like to know, and what their hopes are.

     The bond that would unite those students and leaders in their common endeavor would be a metaphor for the bond that united those who perished on 9/11.

     When the victims of 9/11 were killed, all of them—each one in her or his own way, from messenger to CEO—were working together to realize their own potential in whatever was their pursuit, whatever they were doing, great or small—seeking their own unique yet contextual place in the journey we all share—making a life for ourselves.

      It is the dignity of human action, in which not only the grand and the great but also the small the humble things of life are respected, that binds the community together and that unites us all.  In commemorating their lives, we celebrate that dignity of human action—in the work we all do, the relationships we forge in the process, and all the things that unite us as human beings—a dignity uniquely protected and nurtured through our democratic system.

     It is fitting that Professor Grabar proposed these “9/11 Seminars” in this symposium, which pays tribute each year to Rudolf Wittkower and to his spirit of dialogue and collaborative inquiry, guiding principles in his scholarship, his teaching, and in his life.

     It is that spirit of dialogue and collaborative inquiry that would guide the young people in the “9/11 Seminars,” in commemoration of those who perished, the survivors, and the dedicated rescuers—the firefighters, the police, and the volunteers.   In exploring and communicating the meaning of 9/11, the seminars would be, in a way, like the lives of all those who perished, a testament to America and its strength.

     The “9/11 Seminars” would be living memorials.  Each seminar would spawn others.  Thus, the entire enterprise would become at once an engine driving the world community toward universal peace through mutual understanding and a commemoration of the tragedy of 9/11 that would be self-perpetuating—as one becomes two, the two become  four, the four become eight, and so on, ad infinitum.

     To guarantee their continuity, the seminars should be funded by the rebuilding of Ground Zero.  A percentage of the revenue generated by the development of the site, all the way from construction costs to tenants’ leases, would finance the seminars—in perpetuity.

     As living memorials, one salutary contribution of the “9/11 Seminars” to succeeding generations is aptly expressed by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Return of the King:

        It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what

                       is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting

                       evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may

                       have clean earth to till (Ballantine Books, 1965, p. 190).

     Lest we forget 9/11, let the bond that unites those who perished, the survivors, and the rescuers inspire us to live in peace through a bond of mutual understanding, the objective of the “9/11 Seminars.” 

     That objective echoes the hope for the World Trade Center that its architect, Minoru Yamasaki, had when he conceived it.  As Wayne Andersen reminded us at the symposium last year, Yamasaki envisioned the twin towers as “a physical expression of the universal effort of men to seek and achieve world peace.”

     Oleg Grabar’s proposed idea of “9/11 Seminars” struck a responsive chord among a number of distinguished scholars, who have been inspired to design seminars within their fields of interest.  They will share their ideas with us today.

Presentation of Perennial Wisdom Medals

     It has been our custom, since 1999, to formally acknowledge our speakers as “interpreters of perennial wisdom to an unstable world” through their lives and work, by presenting them with the Perennial Wisdom Medal.

      Fashioned by noted medalist, Eugene Daub, cast and patinated this year by sculptor Andrew Pitynski, and inspired by two of our former speakers, Father Norris Clarke, S. J., and Professor Wayne Dynes, the medal features an image of the ancient Roman poet, Horace, and his words,  Exegi Monumentum Aere Perennius, “I have created a monument more lasting than bronze.”

      Horace wrote those words in 23 BC, as Wayne Dynes explained to us in our first symposium in 1991.   The poet had just written a series of odes, and he realized that his words and thoughts would outlive the many monuments in bronze and stone that surrounded him in the ancient city.

      As the speakers look upon their medals over the years, we hope they will remember, as did Horace in 23 BC, that the principles that infuse their work and the lives they lead will live long after the bronze of their medals has turned to dust.