The art of memorial.
My father is home from a recent trip Back East. He’s posted pictures of the New York area, and his posts are worth looking at. There is one series in particular that I keep going back to. the Irish Hunger Memorial, in Battery Park, NYC. A cottage in Ireland immigrated to the new world, brought over stone by stone. There were stones from every county in Ireland incorporated into this memorial, topped by the plants that would inhabit a farm gone fallow during the famine.
One of the pictures has the sky in the background, with nothing to suggest it is in the middle of a town, let alone The City. Like most good art, the piece takes you out of time and place. Once you crest that hill, you see the Statue of Liberty lifting her lamp beside the Golden Door of Ellis Island. The ancient lands and storied pomp of Europe left behind… except that in this case, you are standing on some of that very land, itself a recent immigrant from when the memorial was built in 2002.
I like the quotes about hunger and famine incorporated into the memorial. They apply to famine in Ireland more than a century and a half ago and famine today. The memorial not only takes you across oceans but also across time making a far ago event speak to today’s problems.