The National September 11 Memorial & Museum announced the launch of a major initiative to invite the loved ones of the nearly 3,000 victims killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993 to help create a permanent exhibit within the Memorial Museum. Beginning next week, letters will be mailed to over 3,200 family members with information about how they can participate in the creation of the memorial exhibition that will pay tribute to the individual lives of those killed in the attacks.

As part of the exhibition, a sequence of individual profiles will present biographical information such as, age, place of birth and/or residence, employer, and career details, accompanied by photographs and audio remembrances. Family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues of the victims are invited to participate by recording audio remembrances and sending photographs, personal objects, video footage, and other materials. While submissions will be accepted on an ongoing basis, in order to ensure that exhibition development is on track for the Museum opening in 2012, victims’ loved ones are encouraged to respond to this outreach by September 2010.

“The memorial exhibition will celebrate each individual life through the remembrances of those who knew them best – their families, friends, and colleagues,” 9/11 Memorial President Joe Daniels said. “The exhibition will create a connection between the visitors and the victims, telling the unique stories and vitality of each of these people – mothers and fathers, husbands and sons, brothers and sisters. We hope the exhibition will allow our visitors to come to know the true diversity and breadth of the losses we sustained on 9/11 in a very personal and human way.”

“As we honor the men, women and children who perished on 9/11, we demonstrate the value we place on individual lives,” 9/11 Memorial Museum Director Alice M. Greenwald said. “To see the thousands of faces and learn about the lives that were tragically cut short will be incredibly powerful. The exhibition will clearly show that terrorism is not an abstraction – its victims are innocent, real people. The memories, photos, video and other material shared by the victims’ loved ones are essential to the creation of the exhibition.”
The Museum’s goal is to collect at least one photograph or portrait image for each person killed in the 2001 and 1993 attacks, as well as written and oral remembrances, commemorative text and personal objects, in order to develop the memorial exhibition and build a robust, accompanying biographical archive.

Partnerships with organizations including StoryCorps and Voices of September 11th will play a key role in the creation of the exhibition. There are three primary ways to participate.

The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum is the not-for-profit corporation created to oversee the design, raise the funds, and program and operate the Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center site. The Memorial & Museum will be located on eight of the 16 acres of the site.

The Memorial will remember and honor the nearly three thousand people who died in the horrific attacks of February 26, 1993, and September 11, 2001. The design, created by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, consists of two pools that reside in the footprints of the original Twin Towers, surrounded by a plaza of oak trees. The Arad/Walker design was selected in a design competition that included more than 5,000 entrants from 63 nations.

The Museum will display monumental artifacts associated with the events of September 11, while presenting intimate stories of loss, compassion, reckoning and recovery that are central to telling the story of September 11 and its aftermath. It will communicate key messages that embrace both the specificity and the universal implications of the events of 9/11; document the impact of those events on individual lives, as well as on local, national, and international communities; and explore the continuing significance of these events for our global community.

Donations can be made through and more information can be found at the Memorial & Museum’s website, www.national911memorial.org, or by calling 212-312-8800.

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