To Life

Today, the Museum launched a new webpage dedicated to Andy Goldsworthy’s Garden of Stones that is full of photos of the Garden over the past six years. You can see pictures from the tree-planting ceremony, or read about the artist and the process of creating the Garden. The website looks great and, for those of us familiar with how it has changed over the years, it’s a great stroll down memory lane. When I first came to the Museum as an intern in August 2004, the Garden was not yet one year old. The saplings were practically sticks—some did not even have a single leaf. When I compare that mental image to seeing the leafy, thriving trees I see every morning I am awestruck. 

The Memorial Garden is a contemplative space dedicated to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and honoring those who survived. Eighteen boulders, each sprouting a single dwarf oak sapling planted by a Holocaust survivor, represent the tenacity and fragility of life. (Even the number of boulders is significant: in Hebrew, the word for 18 is chai, which also means “life.”) Garden of Stones demonstrates how elements of nature can survive in seemingly impossible places. Meant to be revisited and experienced differently over time as the garden matures, the Garden is visible from almost every floor of the Museum.