When it comes to tragedy, there’s a thin line between solemn commemoration and crass commercialization. Actually, it’s often not very thin, and it’s crossed all the time.
The New York Post recently reported that relatives of 9/11 victims are outraged that the National September 11 Memorial Museum will be home to a gift shop that peddles T-shirts, mugs, and rescue dog vests, as well as books and other educational material relating to the deadly terrorist attack. More.
The 9/11 museum’s appetite for crass commercialism will be satisfied with an 80-seat restaurant inside the memorial’s allegedly solemn grounds.
The Pavilion Cafe, run by Danny Meyer’s Union Square Events, is scheduled to open this summer inside the National September 11 Memorial & Museum — a move overlooked when museum officials took media and VIPs through the grounds last week. More.
Standing inside the National September 11 Memorial Museum amid photos of thousands of victims, Mayor Bill de Blasio typed F-O-N-T-A-N-A on a screen, bringing up images of Dave Fontana, the Brooklyn firefighter he met months before terrorists toppled the Twin Towers.
Alone or in groups they emerged from the dark exhibition halls and the even darker subject matter of the National September 11 Memorial Museum, reaching for words like “overwhelming,” “shock” and “gut-wrenching.”
On Wednesday, nearly a week after it was opened to family members of victims and rescue workers, the museum opened to the general public. More.
What if a bomb went off or a fire broke out in the National September 11 Memorial Museum, 70 feet below ground?
At 8:32 am Wednesday morning, on the first day that the National September 11 Memorial Museum opened to the public, 26 uniformed police officers and firefighters marched onto the lawn of the memorial and unfurled an American flag that had flown at 90 West Street, adjacent to Ground Zero, for weeks after the attacks.
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum officially opens to the public Wednesday, but Charles G. Wolf saw the inside days ago.
Wolf lost his wife, Katherine, in the World Trade Center attack and he and other family members were among the first to visit the museum, which sits seven stories underground, below where the Twin Towers once stood. More.