Sculptor Suse Lowenstein preserves 1988 bombing victims’ grief in 76 Montauk statues
Families of those killed when Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 will have to keep waiting for the U.S. trial of the accused bombers, after the latest delay extended a pursuit of justice that has now stretched nearly four decades.
The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie was one of the deadliest terrorist strikes against U.S. citizens. Families of those killed have waited nearly four decades to see the culprits of the bombing face justice in a U.S. courtroom, a step the latest delay pushes further into the future.
Among those who have waited is Suse Lowenstein, an 82-year-old sculptor whose son Alex was on the flight. In the years since the bombing, Lowenstein has produced a monumental collection of 76 rust-hued, life-size nude statues installed in her backyard in the beach town of Montauk, New York. Each statue represents a mother, wife, sister or other female relative of a victim, depicted in a moment of grief — weeping, praying, screaming or collapsing.
“The grief, everything, stays the same, just like this. This is always here,” Lowenstein said, walking among the rust-hued monuments recently. “And so, the feelings don’t go away.”
The 76 statues form a visible private memorial to the bombing and to the female relatives of those killed. Lowenstein has installed the rust-hued figures in her Montauk backyard as a way to fix in permanent form the moment the relatives learned their loved ones had been killed — a moment she has said has remained unchanged across the decades.
The latest delay in the trial comes against the unchanging backdrop of the Montauk statues — monuments to a grief that, as the sculptor puts it, does not diminish with time.