An effort to substantially alter Arizona’s official Sept. 11 memorial has failed, ending months of rancorous debate over statements on it that some deemed unpatriotic or irrelevant to the attacks seven years ago.

The memorial, “Moving Memories,” is a large open-air concrete disc topped by an elevated ring of stainless steel with 54 phrases laser cut into it. Like other monuments to Sept. 11, it provoked arguments over the meaning of the attacks and how to commemorate them, something the artists who designed it said was the point.

The memorial, they said, is meant to evoke the varied, shifting and sometimes conflicting emotions engendered by the Sept. 11 attacks. As the sun moves overhead, light pours through the etchings and projects the phrases on the ground, fuzzy at first, then clear, then gone again.