Though no one has forgotten the events of Sept. 11, most of the impromptu memorials that once were fodder for the nation’s newscasts have been taken down, their urgency giving way to the impulses of a nation eager to move on.

But in Lawrence, at least one memorial remains.

An exhibit at the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art at Kansas University features pre-Sept. 11 black-and-white photographs of the World Trade Center.

“I’m enormously proud of it,” said Andrea Norris, museum director. “It’s something that sort of simultaneously arose from within the entire museum staff.”

Before coming to KU, Norris, who grew up in New Jersey, lived for 10 years in New York City, working and attending graduate school at New York University.

“For me, the events of Sept. 11 were extremely upsetting and terrifying,” she said. “I felt like my neighbors were being slaughtered. The staff here at the museum and at the art history department felt like we had to do something.”

It started with a New York art gallery asking the museum to buy one of 500 reprints of “New York, N.Y,” a 1979 photograph by Hong Kong-born photographer Tseng Kwong Chi. The purchase was with the understanding that the money would be donated to the Robin Hood Relief Fund, set up to help victims of the attack on the World Trade Center.

Donations, gifts, discoveries

In the photograph, Tseng Kwong Chi is seen standing in front of the World Trade Center towers.

An e-mail to museum employees and graduate students quickly raised more than the $250 needed to buy the photograph.

“Everybody chipped in,” Norris said.

A few days later, KU alumnus Jon O’Neal let Norris know he had a museum-quality photograph of lower Manhattan he was willing to donate to the Spencer. Norris accepted.

The panoramic photograph, taken by Eugene Omar Goldbeck in 1973, is about 10 inches high, 5 feet across.

“All of a sudden, we found ourselves with one square picture and one that was long and skinny. The two didn’t really go well together,” Norris said. “And even if they had, we didn’t have a place for them that would show that,” Norris said.

Then, John Pultz, curator of photography, realized the museum already had six abstract photographs of the World Trade Center, taken by German photographer Wolf von dem Bussche in 1976.

Instead of two photographs, the museum found itself with eight.

Inviting conversation

At that point, museum registrar Janet Dreiling came up with the idea of turning one exhibit into two.

The von dem Bussche and Goldbeck photographs were hung in a small study gallery on the museum’s fourth floor, creating a somber, somewhat chilling ambience.

“We like to think of it as ‘meditative,'” Norris said. “But it’s up to the individual.”

The quirky Tseng Kwong Chi photograph was hung in a busy hallway on the main floor. On either side, there’s room for passersby to post pictures or messages for others to see. It’s a place that invites conversation.

“At the time, we didn’t realize we were creating two very different responses to what had happened,” Norris said.

Last week, the main-floor display had attracted 23 photographs  snapshots and color copies, mostly  and a few messages.

“I really like it,” said Anna Gove, a junior from Minneapolis majoring in art history. “I was studying in Paris on Sept. 11, so I missed out on a lot of the more personal aspects of what happened. Over there it was treated more as a news story.

“I have class here everyday,” she added, “so every day I look to see if anybody’s added anything.”

Morgan Payton, a Hutchinson junior majoring in education, said she appreciated the display “because it captures the event in an emotional way that’s different from what you get on TV.”

Both displays will remain until April 1.

The museum’s galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday. The galleries are closed Mondays. Admission is free.