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store given away. The selection process begins not on the level of
strategies but on the level of tactics, reasons to say no. (7)
Here, the examples of the success of Vietnam Veterans and Oklahoma City Memorials
provide important guidance for any memorial undertaking in New York. Though a
necessity in insuring that a wide range of opinions are fairly heard in the selection
process, the committees must ensure that those voices are ultimately preserved in the
memorial. Their forms were designed by specific artists, but the function of the
memorials leaves authorship open, questioned, and uncertain in both the Vietnam
Veterans and Oklahoma City projects. Along with the artist, the design jury and visitors
must be treated and respected as authors of the memorial effort. In allowing for multiple
and unknown authors, a memorial work in New York can cement its position as a truly
public work of art by inviting a multiplicity of reactions. Above all, it should serve as a
symbolic of a public space, open and accessible to all. Only in this way, it seems, New
York can both remember and move on.
Convention