The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt by Faith Ringgold and New York City Students On View at Metropolitan Museum Through January 22, 2012

The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt, designed by the artist Faith Ringgold and created in collaboration with New York City students ages 8 to 19, will be exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 22, 2012. The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt poignantly conveys the importance of respect, understanding, and communication across cultures and religions to achieve the goal of peace. Comprised of three 72-by-50 inch panels, each with 12 squares on the theme of peace, the quilt will be displayed alongside several of the students' original works of art that inspired its content, as well as related works made this summer by the Museum's high school interns.

On Sunday, September 11, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 special programming will be offered at the Museum, including a talk by Faith Ringgold, readings by New York University students related to The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt, and an afternoon concert at The Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing.

Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the nonprofit organization InterRelations Collaborative, which is dedicated to fostering cross-cultural understanding through art among diverse student populations, brought together young people from across New York City to document their experiences. A selection of the students' drawings and writings were published in the book What Will YOU Do For Peace? Impact of 9/11 on New York City Youth. In 2006, the InterRelations Collaborative commissioned Faith Ringgold to design The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt based on the book. Ringgold and her assistant Grace Matthews worked with the young artists to produce a story quilt using compositions from the Peace book. The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt combines words and images to convey messages of healing and unity, and the collective labor of making the quilt is an expression of community building.

On September 11 at 2 p.m., the Museum will present a Sunday at the Met program in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium with Faith Ringgold, entitled The 9/11 Peace Story Quilt and 50 Years of Making Art. Also on September 11, at 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. in the Uris Center for Education, graduate students from New York University's Creative Writing Program will read from the "Poetry Quilt" they developed in response to the exhibition. Visitors can contribute to the project and submit their own responses by using #peacequilt on Twitter.

Commemorative concert
At 3:30 p.m. the concert "Remembering September 11," will be presented at The Temple of Dendur. The Wordless Music Orchestra, conducted by Ryan McAdams, will perform a world premiere live orchestration of William Basinski's ambient masterwork, The Disintegration Loops, dpl 1.1, as well as three other works of memory and remembrance: Ingram Marshall's Fog Tropes II for String Quartet and Tape, Alfred Schnittke's Collected Songs Where Every Verse is Filled With Grief, arranged by David Harrington; and Osvaldo Golijov's Tenebrae for String Quartet. The hour-long program is free with Museum admission.

The concert also will be streamed live on Q2, New York Public Radio's new music internet stream, www.q2live.org, as well as on NPR Music: www.npr.org/music. For information on this concert, call (212) 570-3949 or visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets.

This concert has been made possible by The Metabolic Studio. It is presented by Wordless Music and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in cooperation with Issue Project Room.

Of Special Note
Also on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of September 11, the Museum will have a special display of Charles Demuth's 1928 painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, a graphic representation of the number 5 on a New York City fire engine rushing down the street, as described in William Carlos Williams's poem "The Great Figure." In 2001, modern members of Ladder Company 5 were among the first responders to the tragedy at the World Trade Center on 9/11. Beginning on October 13, 2011, Demuth's painting will be featured in the Metropolitan's exhibition Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe.

The exhibition also will be featured on the Museum's website at www.metmuseum.org.

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