Collage

"Untitled" by Nesita, age 9 (Public School 1, Brooklyn, NY).

Collage image depicting two people holding a "Missing Person" poster and crying. The person on the left is light-brown-skinned and wears a red shirt and brown pants. The person on the right is pink-skinned and wears a green shirt. The missing poster includes a cut-out from a newspaper showing the face of 9/11 victim and NYPD Police Officer Jerome Dominguez.

A piece of lined paper stapled below the collage includes the name "Nesita" and date "9/17/01." Handwritten text on the paper reads: "When I saw the news and the news showed when the second airplane crashed on the twin towers I feel [sic] so sad. I feel bad for the people who lost their mom's, dad's, sister, brothers, uncles, and aunts. People were cring [sic] and putting up poster of their love ones."

On September 11, 2001, there were more than 1.1 million schoolchildren in New York City. New York University’s Child Study Center sprang into action, releasing two manuals on coping with the emotional fallout of the attacks by September 12. The Center would go on to screen and treat children for 9/11-related trauma, as well as solicit artwork for exhibition.

New York University’s Child Study Center and The Museum of the City of New York collaborated to pay tribute to children’s artistic responses to September 11 with the exhibition titled The Day Our World Changed: Children’s Art of 9/11. This juried exhibition contained artworks selected from a pool of hundreds compiled by the Center. The Day Our World Changed aimed to provide insight into how some of the nation’s youngest citizens coped with the events of September 11 and how they envisioned the future of their city, their nation, and the global community.