Remembering in bronze & stone

Lin's proposal was hotly criticized by Vietnam veterans, who found it too funereal, but it has become a pilgrimage site. Young called it "our greatest single counter-monument, remembering a war we'd rather forget."

Friedrich St. Florian's design for a World War II Memorial, now under construction on the mall in Washington, has also occasioned controversy - not because its design is too radical, but too traditional. In its present form, pillars will surround the Rainbow Pool, two arches will serve as entries, and a wall inset with 4,200 bronze stars will symbolize 420,000 Americans who lost their lives.

Criticism centers around the classical architectural elements and iconography (such as sculpted eagles and laurel wreaths), which some associate with Albert Speer's grandiose designs for Berlin under Adolf Hitler, as well as the monument's potential to block the grand sweep of the mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial.

Mr. St. Florian, a professor of architecture at Rhode Island School of Design, explains, "I wanted to strike a balance between classical principles and a sense of modernity." An adaptation of classical architecture was appropriate, he adds, because of its timelessness and the context of surrounding neoclassical buildings.

Most feel such a traditional design would not work for a memorial at the World Trade Center site. "For New York, the center of the art world," Griffen says, "there's an opportunity to set an example of what our culture is like today."

For Philadelphia architect Robert Venturi, classical elements can still work. He and his partner, Denise Scott Brown, advocate "getting back to symbolism and iconography in architecture," rather than abstract design, "which was all the rage in the 20th century," Mr. Venturi says.

Taking time to gain perspective on the events, rather than rushing to a decision on a memorial, is crucial. "This is not about moving fast to closure," Rhode Island's Bonder says. "There should be a very long and intelligent debate." And he cautions against the human impulse to make something positive out of catastrophe. "We can't think that art corrects life."

In this view, memorials should not soothe with answers but provoke questions. "In the aftermath of public trauma, the most important aspect is the perpetrators and why they did what they did," Marcuse says, adding, "Those who did this are evil people, but we need to understand them. A truly great memorial should acknowledge there are inequities."

He admitted such a subtext would be "the equivalent of putting the My Lai massacre in a Vietnam memorial. So it won't happen. It's too difficult emotionally and politically to include." A memorial, Marcuse says, should leave "us with a thorn in our sides to keep reminding us of the horror, but not so that it's too much to bear."

One way to express atrocity is through metaphor. This is the domain of art, which evokes more than tells and traverses the fine line between the necessity, and the impossibility, of representing horror.

"You don't look directly at the sun," Bonder says. "You understand the brightness of the sun by viewing the shadows it casts."

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