New York City‘s 9/11 tribute museum has announced it is being forced to close down permanently.
The museum, which opened in 2006, is located just blocks from where the Twin Towers stood. However, according to the New York Post, a massive drop in visitors thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic means it can no longer make ends meet.
“Two-thirds of our income revenue annually comes from our earned income from admissions. We were completely closed for six months in 2020. 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,” co-founder Jennifer Adams-Webb, CEO of the September 11th Families’ Association, told the outlet.
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“There’s no way we’re going to be able to dig out of this at this rate,” she elaborated. “We need the state or the city to step in with other partners to be able to say, ‘We value you. We want to save this organization,’ but at this point, we can’t continue to dig into a hole.”
The museum, which has had 5 million visitors from 141 countries since 2006, according to the museum’s website, will be disassembled and have its precious artifacts sent elsewhere. Most will go to the New York State Museum in Albany.
The announcement was met with widespread outrage from the public, with many believing the state government could easily save it if it wanted but chose not to.
“This cannot stand. The State handed $1B+ over to the billionaire owners of the Buffalo Bills — they have to stop this,” Former Secretary to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Melissa DeRosa tweeted.
This cannot stand.
The State handed $1B+ over to the billionaire owners of the Buffalo Bills — they have to stop this.#priorities
NYC’s 9/11 Tribute Museum to close: ‘It’s a huge loss’ NYC’s 9/11 Tribute Museum to close: ‘It’s a huge loss’ https://t.co/igbTDoirna
— Melissa DeRosa (@melissadderosa) August 17, 2022
A petition to save the museum has gone up on change.org, garnering over 33,000 signatures as of writing.
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“We’re very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, but … the place for the 9/11 community to come is not here,” Adams-Webb said. “It’s a huge loss for those people who called this their second home, where they could come and share their story … There’s no museum that has the dual mission we have to support the community and also educate visitors that come here.”
