Wall Street Journal - New York bids farewell to Yakov's Mural

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
© 2003 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved
VOL. CCXLII NO. 109

"Trade Center Mural is Retired"
By Alex Frangos

Comedian Yakov Smirnoff's Ground Zero art installation, which served as an iconic backdrop for Sept. 11 commemoration ceremonies, has been removed from a downtown Manhattan skyscraper.

Just days before the finalists for a permanent World Trade Center memorial were unveiled last month, the 200-foot tall patriotic mural was torn in a wind storm. It had hung for over a year from scaffolding that encases 90 West Street, a damaged building across form where the south tower stood.

"It's kind of bittersweet," says Mr. Smirnoff in a telephone interview between comedy routines in Branson, MO., where he performs twice daily. He's best known for his Russian-accented one liners about life under Communism and being a Soviet immigrant in the U.S.

"America's Heart" consists of stars and stripes painted in the shape of a heart with 3,000 brush strokes, honoring each of the victims who died in the attack. In the foreground is the Statue of Liberty. Below the painted section is a phrase of Mr. Smirnoff's invention: "The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act, but by the size of the heart."

Mr. Smirnoff paid for the $100,000 mural himself and persuaded the building's owners to hang it before the first anniversary of the attacks. The mural was based on a painting Mr. Smirnoff made on the night of the disaster which now hangs in his Branson theater. "I don't know what was driving me, just an internal desire to heal," he says. Before coming to America, Mr. Smirnoff taught art at Odessa Pedagogical University in Ukraine.

The mural would have had to come down soon anyway, as the building's owners, BCRE 90 West St LLC, get ready to convert the property into a high-rent apartment building.

What's next for the mural? Mr. Smirnoff has lots of ideas, including hanging it as a "gateway" to Branson, donating pieces of it for a PBS fund-raising drive he's involved in, or having it incorporated into the new World Trade Center. "I'd love for it to be there forever", he says.

To learn more about the mural click here.