A new exhibit at the Peoria Riverfront Museum opening this weekend commemorates the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The “We Remember” exhibition represents a partnership with the national 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York. Items included in the display include gear from a rescued firefighter, exclusive video footage and a piece of steel from the Twin Towers.
“These artifacts tell a story to people who were around when the attacks occurred and people who have been born since,” said Andrew Rand, chair of the Peoria Riverfront Museum’s Sept. 11 advisory committee.
“It's been a privilege to take part in something very solemn. We're not showing art here; we're not showing science, we're not showing engineering. This is an exhibition about the greatest tragedies of this century.”
Subtitled “Stories from the 9/11 Memorial and Museum,” the display is the first public showing assembled primarily with objects from the national museum’s collection.
“We remember when liberty was attacked. If there is a reason for a museum of unique, multidisciplinary nature to use objects to tell stories, this exhibition is that reason,” Peoria Riverfront Museum president and CEO John Morris said during Thursday’s kickoff announcement.
Other features include first-hand accounts from survivors and first responders, and depictions created in the aftermath.
“We want to be able to expose every individual to world events, current events, cultural movements that makes sense for everyone to understand and absorb,” said chief curator Bill Conger.
“This exhibition is a show that you would have to go to New York City to experience, and we are going to provide this experience to our town, our region, the Midwest — without the expense and the issues of going to another place to see it.”
The showcase is part of the Peoria Riverfront Museum’s larger America 250 series of exhibitions. The display is supplemented by objects from the museum’s permanent collection and items loaned from the New York Historical Society and the Lincoln Heritage Museum.
“For generations whose memory of 9/11 exists only through shared history and collective remembrance, like myself, the promise to ‘never forget’ continues,” said project curator and Art Bridges Foundation fellow Megan Nguyen.
“Our hope is that the ESI [Every Student Initiative] students who walk through these doors this academic year will have the opportunity to reflect, learn, remember and maybe even become inspired by the extreme acts of heroism displayed in the days and in the weeks, months and years following, to become better students, citizens, neighbors and friends.”
Nearly 3,000 Americans died in the coordinated attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., along with the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11, 2001. Among them was Peoria native Charles “Chip” Chan, who was working at the World Trade Center on the fateful day.
Peoria Fire Chief Shawn Sollberger said he felt an instinctive desire to be alongside fellow first responders in action at Ground Zero.
“Just about every single person in this room can reflect on where they were on that day,” said Sollberger, who was a third-year firefighter at the time.
“Even in one of the worst tragedies in our country, there was nowhere that I wanted to be more than there. I wanted to be next to my brother, next to my sister, next to a police officer, next to a paramedic, to be able to provide service when our country needed it the most.”
The “We Remember” exhibit opens to the public Saturday and runs through April 11. The museum also will hold a 9/11 remembrance ceremony in conjunction with the City of Peoria and Peoria County at 10 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 11, as part of a statewide 25th anniversary recognition.
