What are the arts of emergency? How can image and text echo in the silence and sound of devastation? What role has culture in the work of reconciliation and rebuilding after violence?

For the second year, from 14 - 17 September 2006, Cities, Art and Recovery brings together artists, writers, architects and musicians from Lebanon, Rwanda, South Africa, Vietnam and other countries around the world as well as from the U.S. in direct conversation with each other to ask and answer these questions.

From Sarajevo to New Orleans, from Kigali to Beirut, artists have commented forcefully on their contemporary political and cultural predicament. As a witness, as a way of mourning, as indictment, as critique, as documentation, as an olive branch, and as a herald of hope, art forms the bedrock of recovery. New York, as a cultural capital, cannot afford to overlook the perspectives of artists in any process of rebuilding.

In a series of public programs, including performances, exhibitions, films, roundtables and a public art competition for downtown New York, Cities, Art and Recovery explores the work of art in the wake of catastrophe.