Currently at the Memorial & Museum

Preserving History... Museum Artifacts Tell a Story

June 27, 2011

The Memorial collections are incident specific to the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, with six designated categories for collecting, including the history of the site, rescue and recovery, reaction to the incident, implications and ramifications of the incident, the trial and investigation and the memorial process. The Memorial Process documents how the community worked together to create the Outdoor Symbolic Memorial and the Museum and meet the goals set forth in the Mission Statement.

This sculpted Chair, preserved in the Memorial’s Archives and Special Collections, is a mock up used during the construction of the Outdoor Symbolic Memorial. The chair’s design is slightly different from the final design of Chairs placed in the Field of Empty Chairs on the Outdoor Symbolic Memorial. The glass base is made from a single piece of soda-lime cast glass. During a weather test, designers discovered that the single piece of cast glass would crack or spall when exposed to Oklahoma’s extreme daily temperature changes, so the glass base was redesigned and constructed from four slabs of soda-lime cast glass connected by a layer of silicone caulk to allow the joints to expand and contract. The cut granite rests in the bronze seat to allow maintenance of the Chairs’ interior lights.

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