“People tried to donate blood, and they were turned away. Then they tried to donate supplies, but after a short while that wasn’t really needed. What they were left to do was contribute their words and their pictures.”

History Is Impatient to Embrace Sept. 11

“New York September 11 by Magnum Photographers,” an exhibition that opens on Tuesday at the New-York Historical Society, … is one of the first museum shows about the terrorist attacks that are already up or in the works. It’s also the first of at least six exhibitions on the events of Sept. 11 that the historical society plans to present in the next few years in what it calls its History Responds Project.

“We don’t want to become the World Trade Center Museum,” said Kenneth T. Jackson, director of the society. “But we do want to respond.”

They are not alone. Last month, the Museum of the City of New York and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History gathered representatives of 33 museums and other institutions for a meeting to discuss how to collect and preserve the countless artifacts and images that have documented the event. “We are all trying to grope our way through an event that is still painful,” said Robert Macdonald, director of the Museum of the City of New York.

If there is agreement about an urgent need to preserve the materials, there seems to be little about when to display them. Some people think the right time is now.