New York‘s 9/11 Tribute Museum has closed in Manhattan, less than a month before the 21st anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Jennifer Adams, co-founder and CEO of the 9/11 Tribute Museum, said the closure is due to financial losses during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Financial hardship including lost revenue caused by the pandemic prevents us from generating sufficient funding to continue to operate the physical museum,” she said in a news release.
The 9/11 Tribute Museum will continue to have an online presence, providing educational resources and support for the 9/11 community, according to Adams.
“We were completely closed for six months in 2020,” she told the New York Post. “We had been averaging 300,000 visitors a year… and last year we had a total of 26,000 visitors, so it completely annihilated our earned income.”
Resources and support for 9/11 community
The majority of the museum’s collections will be relocated to the New York State Museum in Albany. Tours led by survivors, first responders and family members have also come to an end.
“For over a decade the Tribute Museum has shared educational resources for teachers and students online, reaching classrooms around the world with personal stories,” the news release said.
The non-profit September 11th Families’ Association, which founded the museum, said it is “proud to continue its mission with its focus now being on an online, interactive engagement with the 9/11 community”.
The 9/11 Tribute Museum is located close to the site of the World Trade Center and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which will remain open.
Opened in 2006, the 9/11 Tribute Museum offered “factual information about the events [and] the unprecedented rescue and recovery operations”, the website says.
The museum “presents videos, artifacts and ‘person-to-person history’, linking visitors who want to understand the historic events of 9/11 with those who experienced them”.
Images: 9/11 Tribute Museum
