Museum Honors Queens School for Sharing Positive Legacy of 9/11

A blank canvas hanging seven stories below the World Trade Center became a shared space for children and adults from all over the world to convey messages of hope and paint inspiring images. This collective art project is a part of the activities offered in the winter and fall at the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s education center. Evolving as more visitors contributed, the canvas transformed into a mural layered with colorful depictions of significant museum artifacts, first responders and the World Trade Center.

Recently, the museum’s education staff gave a completed mural as a gift to the first school group to attend one of the education programs, which began last fall. That school group was from the Aquinas Honor Society at the Immaculate Conception School in Queens. On Sept. 17 2014, the middle school students and their instructor Carl Ballenas came to the museum, wanting to be the first students to participate in an educational workshop.

They selected the Memorialization & Remembrance workshop, which is a program exploring artifacts that show the many ways people honor the victims of 9/11. Because of the school’s history, the program was particularly important to this school.

In 2009, Ballenas, enlisted the honor society to design a memorial to help teach students and local communities about the spirit of compassion and service that arose after 9/11. With aid from a grant, the students created a stained-glass window that includes a piece of World Trade Center steel donated by the New York City Fire Department. The students also created a book about the window, a copy of which was donated to the museum in 2012.

Months later, the school’s ongoing commitment to memorializing 9/11 inspired the museum education staff to give the vibrant, inspiring mural to the school. “Thank you so much,” Ballenas wrote to the museum staff after receiving the gift. “It is a masterpiece and we are honored to be the stewards of such a meaningful artifact.”

By Megan Jones, Education Programs Senior Manager and Emily Stupfel, Education Specialist