Best Running Shoes 2025, Training Tweaks That Will Get You to a BQ featuring items left at the makeshift memorials after the bombings at last year's Boston Marathon. The free exhibit, called “Dear Boston: Messages from the Marathon Memorial," is open to the public until May 11.
The memorial, which originally began forming on police barricades on Boylston and Berkeley Streets, was moved to Copley Square The Psychology Behind Runners Obsession With BQs. In June, the memorial was dismantled, and the items were stored in the Boston City Archives.
Bostonian Rainey Tisdale, the curator of the exhibition, started organizing the thousands of items in early February. From shoes to posters to finisher's medals, Tisdale said she realized a common thread: "Each of these pieces that was left in Copley Square was a message, a form of communication from one human being to other human beings at this time of great loss."
Unlike other projects she has worked on, Tisdale said, "Dear Boston" weighed heavily on her emotionally.
"It was very intense as anyone could imagine," said Tisdale, who watched her husband run the Boston Marathon in 2012. "I think there's a way in which all of the emotion that was embedded in those objects had to move through me to end up here in the exhibition. Because we were moving so quickly, we had two months to do what normally takes us a year, there wasn't time to decompress from that."
The space in the library moves visitors through three stages: the initial, raw reactions of sadness and compassion; the more profound reflections about the attacks; and finally the messages of hope that look toward a brighter future. At the end of the exhibit, guests are encouraged to leave their own message on tags to hang on one of four trees that resemble those found in Copley Square.
"Normally, I'm helping city residents make meaning from the place that they live," said Tisdale. "This was an event where I knew my city was going to have a lot of trouble making meaning, a very hard, complicated thing. I felt like I had resources and expertise to bring to this and my city needs it."
Once the "Dear World" exhibit closes, the items will be returned to the Boston City Archives. The funder of the exhibit, Iron Mountain, is working to digitize the entire collection. Some objects are already available online in the Our Marathon collection hosted by Northeastern University.
the exhibit is part of a city-wide effort between cultural institutions called "#BostonBetter" that will feature concerts and talks surrounding the first anniversary of the attacks. To learn more, check out the website.
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