"Cover Stories" Exhibition Opens at 9/11 Museum
Cover illustrations of The New Yorker, the weekly news and culture magazine, are the focus of a new exhibition at the 9/11 Memorial Museum that opened Friday.
"Cover Stories: Remembering the Twin Towers on The New Yorker" shows 33 cover illustrations by 25 artists spanning more than four decades of the evolving New York City skyline.
Featuring the illustrations of Charles Addams, Art Spiegelman, Ana Juan and Bruce McCall among others, the exhibition takes visitors through the magazine's depictions of the Twin Towers over time. For years, The New Yorker covers featured the Twin Towers in playful and whimsical imaginings including one that ran on Aug. 6, 2001. After 9/11, somber imagery emerged.
While the destruction of the towers was never depicted, the cover illustrations captured the anxiety and sadness that engulfed the nation after 9/11 and the void in the Manhattan skyline. The exhibition also explores New Yorker covers of commemoration in the years that followed the attack, and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site now home to The New Yorker magazine staff and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
The exhibition will run until May 2018 in the Museum's South Tower Gallery. To learn more about the exhibition, visit 911memorial.org/coverstories.
By 9/11 Memorial Museum Staff
I was a little more than 2 months old during the September 11 attacks. I never knew what the world was like prior to 9/11. For that matter, I never knew what my father, a New York City firefighter, was like prior to 9/11.
In the weeks following Sept. 11, 2001, the West Side Highway was transformed into “Hero Highway,” with crowds lining the busy road to cheer and wave banners while thousands of rescue and recovery workers traveled to Ground Zero.