WTC > paintings

But that is not all.

My thorough reading of the ”Imagining Ground Zero” book made me also discover a whole lot of other opportunities of a different kind, generated this time by the New York Press and sometimes by some individual promoters.

At the beginning of 2002, the New York Times (at the initiative of Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic for the daily) and the New York Magazine (under the leadership of architecture critic Joseph Giovannini), each launched their own events, publishing the various visions of professional architects and also those of architecture critics ; or even sometimes those of creators working in a variety of disciplines, concerned about the shape the devastated Ground Zero site could take, in the light of its reconstruction.

I thus discovered that a whole series of individual initiatives had existed in parallel, which were brought to the attention of the Memorial Competition Office. According to the book "Imagining Ground Zero", these applications continued to flow to the relevant authorities until 2004, from various professionals and sometimes from artists who wished to submit their visions as alternatives to the seven projects selected by the LMDC Official Committee, even after the latter had opted for Daniel Libeskin's proposal. Some of these approaches complied with the specifications imposed by the LMDC and the NY-Port Authority. Others challenging these rules freed themselves from all or part of these constraints, expressing their own visions for the renewal of the WTC. This was the case with my project.

I fully encourage all those interested by the WTC Rebuilding saga to buy and read the “Imagining Ground Zero” and the “A New World Trade Center Design Proposals” books.
All that is listed below is only the tip of the iceberg of these books, which will edify those who read them - as I myself was.
 

Conclusion

Delving deeper into the content of these books between 2021 and 2023 confirmed to me that the man to whom I entrusted my World Trade Center Renaissance paintings in New York City at the end of 2002 (and who, as a reminder, happened to be one of the authors of the internationally acclaimed documentary film "9/11"), had had numerous opportunities to share the vision that my paintings proposed with a large number of stakeholders, all of whom at the time played a role in the Ground Zero rehabilitation effort.
Again, I am not saying that my project had any particular chance of coming to fruition. In any case, no more and no less than the dozens of other alternative projects that were examined by the decision-makers of the time in 2002 and later, and never were selected in any competition ultimately. But at least these visions had the chance to be seen and considered by the people of New York City. Which was precisely my initial objective, and the only reason why I had presented my paintings to James Hanlon.

I must say that these discoveries in 2021 have left me with quite a sour taste in the mouth. The reading of “Imagining Ground Zero” and "A New World Trade Center Design Proposals" revived my dismay, and reopened a wound I thought, if not completely healed, at least scarred by the passage of the previous two decades. Because all the public initiatives listed above that took place in New York City between 2002 and 2004 demonstrate that if the person who received and kept my paintings in 2002 had respected the request expressed in the letter addressed to him, the course of events could have been very different. "Imagining Ground Zero" shows how vast the range of possibilities was at the time. But the way things unfolded slammed those doors shut, and caused me to forever miss the appointment I had tried to make with the future of Ground Zero, at my own small level and with my limited means.