A wall-sized mosaic of squares in shades of blue, by the artist Spencer Finch, features one square for every person who died in the attacks in 1993 and on September 11th, Weinstein explained, adding that the blues attempt to evoke the shade of the sky on the latter day. We were in it together, we were compassionate with one another, we hugged strangers on the street, people volunteered for public service, she said, adding, It was far too short-lived. I asked whether it couldnt also be said that 9/11 had brought out the worst in us, given that it was used to justify acts of violence, torture, and discrimination. 
She was laid off, along with many other museum employees, after the pandemic temporarily closed the museum. Surrounding it is a plaza with a grove of nearly 400 North American swamp white oak trees. Learn more about the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. 
The portraits of people who died are arranged on the wall in alphabetical order; touch-screen computers allow visitors to search for victims by name, place of work, or country of birth. Greenwald, for her part, said that the filmmakers do not seem to understand that everything we do here must honor the commemorative nature of the site. Then she added, And, if theres a fire drill, you go to where you need to be, you dont dawdle by your desk, you go to where theyre directing you to escape to a safe place, because its a dangerous world.. Thats less the point than what it is were going to do, in the present, about a country with a very complex relationship with the world, and about our own role in that, as Americans, about our own role as global citizens., A museum about the past inevitably expresses a vision for the future. It opened in 2008, but unlike the memorials in New York and Pennsylvania, it has no education center. The City is operating a private Reflection Room in the Remains Repository at the World Trade Center Memorial for victims' families. On February 26th of that year, she was giving a course on stress management. Miller got her job at the museum in 2019. She got to the lobby, which had been flooded by the sprinkler system; an engineer she knew took her arm to keep her from slipping. Mackenzie Fierceton was championed as a former foster youth who had overcome an abusive childhood and won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Who are we as a nation? The twin reflecting poolswith the victims' names inscribedon surrounding bronze panels and the country's largest artificial waterfalls cascading down the sidessit on the original site of the Twin Towers. As a docent, Weinstein is often posted next to particular artifacts. As a docent, Weinstein doesnt recount her own experience, or say much about the fifteen years that she worked in the World Trade Center, unless a visitors question prompts a story about it. These objects rotate in and out of the space, along with text, written by family members, regarding the person who was lost. They are also asking for a federal appropriation. The September 11th Families' Association put together the 9/11 Tribute Museum to help those looking to learn about 9/11 with those who survived the event. We walked past a photograph of the towers taken at 8:15 A.M. on September 11th, and a map of the Eastern Seaboard, with planes marking the locations and times of the crashes not only at the World Trade Center but also in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon. Plan a Moving Visit to the National September 11 Memorial Museum, Glowing Memorial to the 9/11 Attacks in NYC, See Lower Manhattan in Two Days: The Perfect Itinerary, World Trade Center: A History of the World Trade Center Towers. Twenty years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the museum is still struggling to address the legacy of those events. Photographs by Tonje Thilesen for The New Yorker. 
He believes that New Yorkers are attracted to complexity, and that the museum is the opposite of that. Its simplistic, its Islamophobic, its racist, its a whole series of things that anybody who goes there feels, he said. When Weinsteins legs began to cramp, and she stopped to rest, a stranger asked whether she needed assistance. (The handle of the squeegee is displayed in a glass box.) The 9/11 Museum was rated the No. Of the at least thirteen thousand or so people working in the building that afternoon, most had stayed in for lunch. As in 1993, people helped one another. This coperation is something that she likes to emphasize when she tells her story to visitors to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, where she has volunteered as a docent since shortly after it opened, in 2014. Most browsers include functionality to let you increase or decrease the text on a web page. Conspiracy theorists often visit the museum, eager to proclaim their opinions and primed to argue. Amid the tiles is a quote from Virgil: No day shall erase you from the memory of time. (Classical scholars have pointed out that this line, from the Aeneid, refers to soldiers who have just killed enemies while they slept, and might be more fitting for the hijackers than for their victims.) The extraordinary responses of individuals to the challenges they faced are inspiring and worthy of remembrance. On a recording, the names of the dead are read out loud, as they are at the memorial on each anniversary. Hennes had hoped that the museum might broach some of the political implications of the day in a section of the historical exhibition called Aftermath. A proposal for a montage of politicians using the site for political ends was dropped in favor of a video about the recovery workersa legitimate choice, Hennes said, but one that hides a troubling legacy of the event. The National September 11 Memorial and Museum are places of remembrance and quiet reflection. The 9/11 Memorial Museum commemorates the lives of every victim of the 2001 and 1993 attacks, sharing the story of 9/11 through exhibitions including artifacts and various multimedia displays. The memorial site is open to the public with no admission charge. By 2001, she had been promoted. An education center, these men say, could put it in perspective. You can find a name on the 9/11 Memorial or get information about how the names are arranged. She also wants the museum to convey how New York and the nation came together following the attack, she told me. She was ten floors above her old job, managing computer trainings. The blast had taken out the emergency generators; the lights went out, and the ventilation system wasnt functioning. The Russians Fleeing Putins Wartime Crackdown. One of the first things a visitor sees on the descent into the exhibition halls, seventy feet underground, is part of a slurry wall that once surrounded the buildings, holding back the Hudson River. Small display cases set into the walls contain objects donated by family members to represent their loved ones, like totems buried with the dead. At an intersection nearby, she saw an object that looked like an engine cordoned off by yellow police tape. When the office began to fill with smoke, they decided to evacuate. Then the University of Pennsylvania accused her of lying. Outside, police officers urged her to leave the area, and she walked toward her brothers office, a few blocks east. Ad Choices. We reached a small room about the rise of Al Qaeda, painted a desert beige that recalled the yellow filters Hollywood likes to use when depicting the Middle East. Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange anchor New York City's Financial District, and the famed Brooklyn Bridge, one of the country's oldest and most scenic roadway bridges, spans the East River to connect the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Weinstein has memorized a litany of details about the history of the World Trade Center and the day of its destruction. We see polls that say it was a plane crash, we see social media calling it a plane crash, we see others calling it a bomb. Their goal is to raise $35 million. Here, you can see a two-story building design with high-tech, hands-on exhibits that will tell the stories of the people who perished, how the world responded and how it changed after that day. We've updated our Privacy Policy, which will go in to effect on September 1, 2022. She didnt know whether she was descending into a fire or whether she would be overcome with smoke inhalation. 2022 Cond Nast. September 11 Memorial Events in Washington, D.C. A List of NYC Churches, Synagogues, and Temples to Visit, Where to Eat, Drink, and Play in Manhattan's Financial District, 18 Best Things to Do as a Solo Traveler in NYC, Love History? At a recent panel discussion following a screening of The Outsider, Elizabeth Miller, who previously worked in the exhibitions department of the 9/11 Museum, described her frustrations with the museums curatorial decisions. In her role with H.R., Weinstein often talked to the buildings engineers, and she knew, from them, that the World Trade Center had structural redundancies to keep it standing in the event of an accident or attack. The memorial aboveground, with its falling waters and dark pools, where flowers are placed in the grooves of the names of the dead on their birthdays, is perhaps better suited to mourning. Since the Tribute Museum opened in 2006, family members, survivors, first responders, and Manhattan residents have been sharing their personal stories on walking tours and in the museum'sgalleries. after September 11th, nor to the hate crimes suffered by Muslim and Sikh New Yorkers, nor to the failures of U.S. intelligence leading up to the attacks. Rebirth at Ground Zero, an immersive film that follows the rise of the new World Trade Center, also has a permanent home at the museum. She is also a travel agent and NYC & Company-certified New York City specialist. 
September 11th as an inflection point that reordered world politics and ushered in a new phase of American civic life is not seriously considered. She remerged outside, into a blizzard of debris, and walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge, still in her heels. All rights reserved. Someone entered from a lower floor and said that the second tower had also been struck. No donation is too small and you can can feel good about where your money is going in trying to create something that will be important to future generations, Laycheck said. Behind the wall, closed to the public, are the on-site office of New York Citys Chief Medical Examiner, and the unidentified remains of the dead. To Miller, the museums minimal treatment of Islamophobia seemed itself Islamophobic. The 9/11 Memorial opened on Sep. 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the attacks. She finally reached the mezzanine level and exited onto the plaza, where she immediately slipped on ice and fell on her knees. She stopped going to the high floors of tall buildings. Before the pandemic, Weinstein told me, she would often direct them to a recording booth where museumgoers were invited to share their thoughts and experiences, and would encourage them to say whatever they wanted in there. We looked at the posters of the missing that hung in the streets of lower Manhattan. Twitter In the dark, Weinstein had to feel for each step. The Pentagon Memorial Fund is working to build an education center at the 9/11 Memorial in Arlington, which honors the 184 lives lost there on Sept. 11, 2001, and all who sacrifice so that we may live in freedom. The site in lower Manhattan includes an 8-acre memorial plaza dedicated to both the victims and survivors of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and Feb. 26, 1993. She tells the story of Jan Demczur, a window washer caught in an elevator above the fiftieth floor with five other passengers, who used the metal handle of his squeegee to pry open the elevator doors, punch a hole through the Sheetrock, and lead them to escape. Hennes had worked as an adviser on Freedom Park, in Pretoria, South Africa, a memorial to the people who died fighting apartheid. More than a million visitors a year walk the hallowed ground, but without any context what are they taking away? Connaughton said. She told me she disagreed with the use of the phrase enhanced interrogation techniques in museum text. Three million people visited that year, but most of them were from places farther away than New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut. You can access 12 subway lines and PATH trains from two convenienttransportation hubs near the World Trade Center site. It was going to be, as the Times put it, a large anniversary exhibition examining musics role in uniting Americans after 9/11 and other tragedies.. The wall no longer serves its practical functionanother was built behind itbut the floor is often damp with seepage, where the city meets bedrock. She tells them that she isnt angry, that she is still just sad. Famous chefs and restaurateurs such as Daniel Boulud, Wolfgang Puck, and Danny Meyeroperate locations in lower Manhattan, where you can also find city stalwarts such as Delmonico's, P.J. Heather Cross is a longtime New York resident who has written about the city since 2002. I dont entirely disagree with you, she said. So far, they have raised about $15 million. Connaughton, a former Virginia State Transportation Secretary, told WAVY how 9/11 changed his life. From the beginning, family members of the dead balked at the museums commercial aspects, such as the entry feenow twenty-six dollarsand the gift shop, where N.Y.P.D. In 2019, the museum dedicated the Memorial Glade to rescue and recovery workers, but Weinstein is among those who think it could do more to include them in its story. This is a read only version of the page. View > Zoom > Zoom In, In the View menu, select Text Size. You don't have permissions to view these records. I asked Weinstein what she hoped that the memory of September 11th would teach people who did not witness it firsthand. The United States experienced the worst incident of terrorism in its history; the coordinated hijacking of four commercial planes, the planned attack on symbolic targets, and the murder of innocent people were all tragic and shocking events. PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) On this Memorial Day, there's a push to make sure future generations never forget the terrorist attacks that changed our world forever. And, then, studying the cultures, the religion, and the language brought me peace.. We have a very divided nation now and we seem to be mad at each other for everything, Connaughton said, and as he can attest, timing can make all the difference. The explosion opened up a crater a hundred and thirty feet across and five or six stories deep, but the building stood. And I can remember even thinking what happens if 10-15 years from now people are driving by the Pentagon and they don't remember what side got hit because you know, life goes on, Laycheck told WAVY. On her first visit, Weinstein could smell a faint mustiness, and the odor, combined with the images and sounds of the exhibitsthe recorded voices of panic and the clanking alarms of the first respondersassaulted her senses. And so, there are people that I worked with in the reserves as well as people I knew in New York who were killed, Connaughton said. If you want to learn about the terrorists, why they attacked the Trade Center, what was their credo, their fatwa, you can stay here, but Ill meet you on the other side. In the exhibit, the detention camps at Guantnamo Bay receive only cursory mention. I really immersed myself and it just taught me so much, she told me, adding, I dont agree with him by any means, but everybody has some rationale in their brains, and, for me, just understanding that helped me to wrap my head around 9/11 and helped me move forward. T-shirts are sold alongside mugs and keychains that bear the words Never Forget. (The museum has received government grants but is private, and relies on ticket sales and donations to stay afloat.)