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25 Years Later, 9/11’s Artifacts Still Call for a Different Level of Curatorial Care

New York State Museum staff continue to work with the surviving members of FDNY Engine 6, the families of the firefighters lost on 9/11 and other family groups and survivors to ensure that object loans and exhibit decisions are made thoughtfully and respectfully.

Most objects, artworks and artifacts in museum displays are professionally cared for to one extent or another, but there are some memorial works and pieces of history that demand the most dedicated attention for the raw emotional response they inspire. As a general rule of thumb, the more recent the memory, the rawer it feels. The United States is observing the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks this year, and every piece of building debris, each photograph and each homemade memorial to a civilian lost promises to stop viewers and draw forth the memory of where they were that clear September morning.

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In the haze of war that followed 9/11, few outside of New York or Washington, D.C. tracked the cleanup or the cataloging of the tragedy’s aftermath. However, Aaron Noble, senior historian and curator of political and military history at the New York State Museum, told Observer that his institution began documenting the events of September 11 shortly after the attacks. “Under Section 233 of New York State Education Law, the........

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