Cornellians help Andy Goldsworthy create Holocaust memorial in NYC

Helping to plant a tree in the blasted-out center of a boulder at the Memorial Garden of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City are, from left, environmental sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, Cornell senior Miriam Pinsker, Karen Edelstein, an extension associate in landscape architecture at Cornell, Judy Marwell and museum director David Marwell. Gerri Jones

By Linda Myers

British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy's Garden of Stones, 18 massive stone boulders with holes fire-seared through their centers, were the subject of stories in The New Yorker and The New York Times when they were first installed in the Memorial Garden at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City this past September.

Goldsworthy, whose art is characterized by spare, simple shapes made from natural materials such as leaves and stones, is an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell through June 2006. The Garden of Stones installation came about through the active assistance of a number of people at Cornell.

The Memorial Garden is an outdoor space devoted to contemplation and reflection, dedicated to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and honoring those who survived. Eighteen boulders were selected because in the Hebrew tradition the number represents life. When the work is complete, a single sapling, planted by Holocaust survivors, will emerge from the hollow within each stone. As the trees mature, each will grow to become a part of the stone, its trunk and roots widening and fusing to the base -- the artist's metaphor for the tenacity and fragility of life.

During a visit to campus in December 2002, Goldsworthy and his assistant, Jacob Ehrenberg, met several times with a small group of students, staff and faculty to discuss the planned installation. Graduate students in Cornell's Department of Landscape Architecture advised on size for the glacial erratic boulders, which were discovered in Vermont fields by Goldsworthy and Ehrenberg. The saplings were grown at Cornell under the guidance of Professor Tom Whitlow from the Department of Horticulture, who recommended the dwarf chestnut oaks (Quercus prinoides) that were the final selection and advised on optimum conditions needed for growth and nourishment of the trees. It was Whitlow, according to The New Yorker, who warned that the trees' root systems might be threatened if cambium just below the surface of the bark were crushed as the growing tree pressed against the stone.

The saplings were nurtured throughout the summer at Cornell by faculty and students. One student, Miriam Pinsker, a senior in natural resources, who is granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, helped transport the saplings to New York City and took part in the planting this September. Karen Edelstein, an outreach and extension associate for the Department of Landscape Architecture who holds a B.S. in natural resources (1984) and an MPS in environmental management (2001) from Cornell, also assisted in the planting.