With the public drop, the 9/11 museum in New York closes its doors

The museum that told the story of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York from the perspective of those affected has closed its doors and closed tours, one of the co-founders said on Thursday.

After closing the doors of the 16-year-old 9/11 Tribute Museum on Wednesday night (17), volunteers spent Thursday morning coordinating the collection of a steel beam from the World Trade Center that was going into storage, along with other artifacts such as rescuers’ equipment and parts of the two planes that crashed into the buildings.

Museum attendance has declined from nearly 300,000 a year before the six-month closure due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 to 26,000 in the year 2021, said Jennifer Adams-Webb, co-founder of the museum and executive director of the Association of Museums. 9/11 Families who helped start the museum.

“Visitors just didn’t come back,” she said, saying the only way the museum could stay open was with government support. She couldn’t vouch for that, despite months of conversations with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and other offices, she said. The Department of Cultural Affairs did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The main difference between the tribute museum and the larger one near the 9/11 Memorial & Museum at Ground Zero, where the towers once stood, was the focus of its program on stories of people who were directly affected by the tragedy, told for themselves, said Adams.