The Sphere: A Symbol of Resilience and Truth
In 1967, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey commissioned five sculptors to create works of art to display at the World Trade Center. Among them was world-renowned German artist Fritz Koenig, who spent the next four years producing Grosse Kugelkaryatide or The Sphere, a globular sculpture made of bronze and steel. Koenig has described the work as “a head, a Cyclops, and in some ways a self-portrait,” fulfilling Chief WTC Architect Minoru Yamasaki’s vision of a distinctive installation to complement his grandiose designs. The Sphere weighed over 20 tons and stood 27-feet-tall between the Twin Towers from 1971 until the attacks on September 11, 2001. It was inexplicably the only artwork to survive the smoldering wreckage, structurally intact but copiously scarred. Six months later, the Bloomberg administration transferred Koenig’s work to Battery Park where it remained for the next fifteen years.
While negotiations and compromise on the blueprint of the official 9/11 Memorial spanned over years, one person was unrelenting in his pursuit of bringing The Sphere back to the World Trade Center. Michael Burke lost his brother, Captain William F. Burke Jr. of the Fire Department, to the attacks, and lobbied the Port Authority to repatriate the sculpture. “It got beat up, it got damaged, and it carries the truth inside of it,” Burke said in a New York Times interview. “That’s the power of an authentic artifact.” At last, on November 29, 2017, The Sphere returned to Liberty Park, an elevated space overlooking the 9/11 Memorial South Pool.
Many memorials serve as a tribute to the victims of a tragedy and capture the tremendous sense of loss, such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., a 493-foot wall engraved with over 58,000 names of the Americans killed during the war or missing in action. While The Sphere is not a prototypical memorial, the artwork is both a visceral reminder of the magnitude of the attacks and a universal symbol of resilience. The notable dents and gaping holes in the bronze globe caused by the collapse of the Twin Towers now symbolize scars that reveal an inherent memory — a way to faithfully memorialize the destruction that had occurred. “These [types of] artifacts are beautiful,” said Jonathan Greenspan, a passerby of The Sphere. “People come here to visit day in and day out.”
Today, New York residents and tourists alike gather at the benches surrounding the sculpture, taking their lunch break or simply a breath from the haste of Lower Manhattan. The memorial space exudes an unexpected sense of normalcy, as if the monument was always meant to be there in its current form. But The Sphere’s actual path to Liberty Park exemplifies resiliency in the aftermath of devastation. “My first impression is that I’m impressed the city put enough care to restore it,” said Michael Lin, a spectator observing the sculpture. “They made the right decision. It’s part of history.”
