Less well known than the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum, built where the Twin Towers once stood in Lower Manhattan, New York, the 9/11 Tribute Museum closed its doors this Wednesday (17th). The information comes from the New York Post newspaper.
The closure is a result of the financial losses the museum has suffered since the pandemic began, the museum’s CEO and cofounder Jennifer AdamsWeb told the local publication.
AdamsWeb said twothirds of the venue’s annual revenue came from ticket sales. The complete suspension of its activities for six months at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 and the drop in visitor numbers from about 300,000 visitors annually to 26,000 in 2021 made the museum’s operations unsustainable.
“Visitors just didn’t come back,” said the CEO. In her opinion, the museum can only be maintained with public funds, but talks with the New York City Department of Culture have not materialized. The agency did not respond to questions from Portal.
The museum is closing less than a month after the 21year terrorist attacks milestone. It was opened in 2006 by a group of relatives of victims of the incident in a former Delhi and has been operational on Greenwich Street since 2017. It honors both those who lost their lives in the attacks and those whose lives were affected.
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According to CNN, most of the museum’s artifacts, videos and other items will be transferred to the State Museum of New York in Albany. This includes, for example, the equipment of the rescue workers and parts of the two planes that crashed into the buildings. However, the tour offered by the facility led by survivors, first responders, residents and family members who lost loved ones in the attacks is no longer offered.
The museum will live on with its online presence. This includes interactive videos that tell the stories of those whose lives were impacted by the attacks and who responded with humanitarian initiatives.
9/11 is the most momentous event in recent American history. It has devastated the US in its longest war in Afghanistan, redefined politics, economics and priorities and definitively changed the country’s collective psychology.