Works By Daniel Kohn Given To Sept. 11 Museum

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum (9/11 Memorial Museum) at the World Trade Center in New York City has acquired for their Permanent Collection a seminal work by Brooklyn-based artist, Daniel Kohn. His painting installation, Looking South (2003), is a monumental four-panel work originally commissioned by Fiduciary Trust Company International to serve as a memorial to the firm's 9/11 experience. The painting, which Fiduciary Trust bequeathed to the museum, went on view in early August. The Museum is open daily 9:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.; for more information, visit: www.911memorial.org.

Daniel Kohn (b. 1964), a figurative painter whose early career in Europe was largely inspired by scenes of a family house in the center of France, came to know the Trade Towers from a unique point of view: shortly after his move to Brooklyn, Kohn visited the renowned Windows on the World on the 100th floor of the World Trade Center: "I looked out over the Brooklyn skyline, and felt I could see the curve of the earth. I wondered what it would be like to work on my over-sized still-lives while looking at this curved horizon."

After the September 11th attacks, Kohn met New York Metropolitan Transit Authority's Art for Transit program Director, Sandra Bloodworth, and was commissioned to create an environment for reflection on the events of 9/11 in Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Station.

Kohn painted two 35 feet high multi-canvas paintings: Seen From Above: Towards Brooklyn and Towards New Jersey.These huge panneaux captured the breathtaking and awe-inspiring views now lost to the city. A very personal and emotive piece for the artist, Kohn managed to find a way of communicating the physical sensation of being in the Towers and transforming this into a place for all New Yorkers to come and reflect on what had happened to them and their city. Installed at opposite ends of the vast Vanderbilt Hall, the paintings' clear washes of color and softened contours of the skyline created an immersive environment -- one of reflection, of memorialization, and of hope. Looking South,the last of the series of paintings Kohn realized on this theme, was commissioned by Fiduciary Trust Company International in 2003 and hung in the firm's post 9/11 headquarters for 12 years before being donated to the 9/11 Museum earlier this year. The installation, comprised of four panels, each 10 x 10 1/2 feet, is installed vertically, recapturing the feel of that seminal view over the New York harbor.

Kohn felt a personal connection with the Towers - it was his creative home for a period of time when he was just becoming familiar with the rhythms and spatial concerns of the urban-scape; he found an extraordinary perch from which to learn the contours of the entire city and beyond.

Following his residency at the Trade Towers, Daniel Kohn was the Founding Artist in Residence at the Broad Institute for Genomic Research. He came to the Broad at the invitation of Chief Scientific Officer, Todd Golub, where the two began a dialogue on the convergence of art and science that has lasted nearly a decade. As a result, Kohn began to develop a new visual vocabulary, mapping out ideas in genomics through sequences of shapes and patterns that hint of visual metaphors. In 2013, he completed Instance of a Dataset, his most ambitious commission since Seen from Above, a seven-floor permanent commission for the Broad's 7 Cambridge Center building at its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2013 and 2014.