Panel Discussion + Book Launch

As the permanent 9/11 memorial becomes a reality at Ground Zero, this panel discussion, with Q and A, assesses the legacy of the spontaneous, ephemeral memorials created all over New York in the weeks after the attack.

PANELISTS

• Martha Cooper, renowned documentary photographer

• Steve Zeitlin, Director of City Lore, whose organization was immediately involved in helping preserve representative 9/11 memorials

• Kay Turner, Folk Arts Director, Brooklyn Arts Council, who has written extensively on memorial traditions, and others.

• Lisa Radakovich Holsberg, Soprano & faculty of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University

• Marci Reaven, Vice President for History Exhibitions, New York Historical Society

• Bob Holman, Poet

• Harriet F Senie, Director of Museum Studies and Professor of Art History, City College

The panel is followed by a book signing for the launch of Martha Cooper's, "Remembering 9/11" (New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2011), a selection of photographs highlighting Cooper's 2001 documentation of spontaneous memorials in New York City.

PANELIST BIOS

Martha Cooper is an American photojournalist born in the 1940s in Baltimore, Maryland where she picked up photography at the age of three. She graduated from high school at the age of 16, earned an art degree at age 19 from Grinnell College. She taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, journeyed by motorcycle from Bangkok to London and received an ethnology diploma from Oxford. She worked as a staff photographer for the New York Post during the 1970s. She was a photography intern at National Geographic Magazine in the 1960s, and worked as a staff photographer at the New York Post in the 1970s. Her photographs have appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian and Natural History magazines as well as several dozen books and journals. She is the Director of Photography at City Lore, the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture.

Soprano Lisa Radakovich Holsberg is a member of the music faculty of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University and an active performer and teacher in the NYC region. In December 2009 her composition Come, True Light: Prayer of St. Symeon the New Theologian for voice, piano, cello, bells and cymbal received its premiere at The Sophia Institute Second Annual Conference at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. A second New York performance of Come, True Light followed in January 2010 at the Music at Our Saviour's Atonement (MOSA) concert Songs of the Spirit, featuring musical settings of spiritual poetry from different traditions. She recently toured Poland and Prague as soloist with the C.W. Post Symphonic Band in Copland's Old American Songs and the premiere of Carl Strommen's Polska Przeplatanka: A Collage of Memories with soprano colleague Danielle McRoy. The premiere of her choral composition The Akathist of Jesus Christ is scheduled to premiere at the 2011 Sophia Institute Conference at Union Theological Seminary this fall. Lisa has presented her award-winning 9/11 music peace project Race for the Sky, music by Richard Pearson Thomas, across the U.S. since its premiere on the first anniversary of 9/11 on September 11, 2002, at The New-York Historical Society. Lisa holds degrees in music performance and education from Teachers College, Columbia University and University of California, Irvine.

Harriet F. Senie is director of museum studies and professor of art history at City College and also at the CUNY Graduate Center. Previously she was associate director of The Art Museum, Princeton University and director of the Amelie Wallace Gallery at SUNY, Old Westbury. She is the author of The 'Tilted Arc' Controversy: Dangerous Precedent? (2002), Contemporary Public Sculpture (1992), co-editor of Critical Issues in Public Art (1992; 1998), and numerous articles and essays on public art. She has a PhD in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts; an MA in art history from Hunter College; and a BA in English and American Literature from Brandeis University. Her forthcoming book is Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11. She is co-founder and director of Public Art Dialogue (PAD), a CAA affiliated cross-disciplinary organization of academics and other professionals and students interested in public art (publicartdialogue.org), and co-editor of the peer review journal on the subject, Public Art Dialogue published twice a year by Routledge.

Kay Turner, BAC's Folk Arts Director, has a Ph.D. in Folklore and Anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin. In addition to her work at BAC, she teaches courses on gender, theory of time and performance, and oral narrative theory in the Performance Studies Graduate Program at New York University. Among her publications are Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women's Altars (Thames and Hudson) and Baby Precious Always Shines (St. Martin's Press), an edited selection of love notes between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Her current scholarly work includes "September 11th and the Burden of the Ephemeral," an essay to be published in 2008 and a book project Transgressive Tales: Rethinking the Grimms' Fairy Tales from Queer Perspectives. On the down low, Kay sings and writes songs for her band Snaggletooth, a collaboration with NYU medievalist, Dr. Carolyn Dinshaw.

Steve Zeitlin is a folklorist, filmmaker, writer, and cultural activist. He is the founding director of City Lore, an organization dedicated to fostering New York City and America's  living cultural heritage. He is a commentator for public radio, and is the author of a number of books on America's folk culture, including Because God Loves Stories: an Anthology of Jewish Storytelling, City Play, and three books for young readers. He has documented, recorded and fallen in love with carnival pitches, children's rhymes, family stories, subway stories, ancient cosmologies, and oral poetry traditions from around the world.

Dr. Marci Reaven has a PhD. in U.S. History from NYU. She co-curated "Missing: Streetscapes of a City in Mourning," the first museum exhibition on 9/11, which opened in March 2002 at the New York Historical Society. Reaven was previously coordinator of City Lore's "Place Matters" project. She has organized several exhibits that utilize ephemera, including a recent one considering the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire at NYU's Grey Gallery.

Poet Bob Holman will read from his project "Two Towers," an extended poem he created with poet Eileen Myles, in which each line by a different writer builds to recreate the twin towers in words. Holman was instrumental in bringing "slam poetry" to New York. He founded the Bowery Poetry Club in 2002 and is a regular host there. He has held teaching posts in poetry at The New School and Bard College.

Harriet F. Senie is director of museum studies and professor of art history at City College and also at the CUNY Graduate Center. Previously she was associate director of The Art Museum, Princeton University and director of the Amelie Wallace Gallery at SUNY, Old Westbury. She is the author of The 'Tilted Arc Controversy: Dangerous Precedent' (2002), Contemporary Public Sculpture (1992), co-editor of Critical Issues in Public Art (1992; 1998), and numerous articles and essays on public art. She has a PhD in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts; an MA in art history from Hunter College; and a BA in English and American Literature from Brandeis University. Her forthcoming book is Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11. She is co-founder and director of Public Art Dialogue (PAD), a CAA affiliated cross-disciplinary organization of academics and other professionals and students interested in public art (publicartdialogue.org), and co-editor of the peer review journal on the subject, Public Art Dialogue published twice a year by Routledge.