9/11 Museum To Add New Exhibit For First Time Since Opening

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork)-- For the first time since it opened nearly two years ago, The National September 11 Museum at World Trade Center is adding a new exhibit.

The addition coincides with the upcoming 15th anniversary of the terror attacks, CBS2's Lou Young reported.

The new temporary exhibit will open to the public on September 12 in a space just off the cavernous interior of the museum's Great Hall. The display is less literal than the rest of the place and more visceral art inspired by the disaster.

"If you've been here before you can't say, 'Well I've done that.' You can come back and see the new presentation and maybe in coming back you'll see other things through a new lens as well," Museum Director Alice Greenwald said.

The artists are all New Yorkers who witnessed or were touched by 9/11. Phil Stanton and two other members of the "Blue Man Group" collected the charred piece of paper that fluttered down their Brooklyn rehearsal space when the planes first hit. They produced a video and music piece called "Exhibit 13."

"They were diary entries, they were calendars, they were letters of employment, they were financial ledgers. They represented people's lives; they represented the work that was going on... to us it kind of represents spirits or souls floating in space," Stanton said.

It's never been easy to come down to the site of the attacks, but 15 years on it seems at least bearable: the passage of time enabling visitors to think about some things that before were too painful.

For sculptor Eric Fischl the image of people falling from the towers was seared into his memory. He decided to speak for them, giving his "Tumbling Woman" of feeling of lateral movement of struggle.

"Part of my reasoning for having one of the arms of the figure to have its arm sticking out was the hope that people would reach out and grab hold, maybe try to slow it down in some way," he said.

Another piece has a tile for every life lost that day, each one an individual image and together parts of a larger whole. Others feature empty skies and hints of horror. There are 13 works in all.