Last Column in Foundation Hall Jin Lee

For some, it may be too soon to review the events of 9/11: The wounds are still raw, the consequences still unfolding, the issues still controversial. But a museum that devotes much of its space to honoring the fallen isn't a place for these issues to be debate.

In the 9/11 Memorial Museum visitors will come very close to experiencing (or re-experiencing) the events of Sept. 11, 2001, through video, sound clips, photos and artifacts that are shocking and heart-wrenching.

The museum has two somewhat incompatible aspirations. The nearly 3,000 people whose lives were lost are honored within an enclosure surrounded by the sawed-off rows of steel columns that supported the South Tower of the World Trade Center. A similar enclosure within the North Tower foundations tells the tragic story of the terror attacks, what led to them, and the recovery.

Through a long and painful process, director Alice Greenwald and an enormous team of curators, conservators, advisers, exhibit designers and architects created an experience as respectful as it is powerful.

With more than 10,000 objects, 23,000 images and 500 hours of film and video, the 110,000-square-foot Memorial Museum opens with a collection and square footage to match many substantial museums. That's why the museum, along with the memorial, cost a staggering $700 million, requiring a $24 adult admission and a $60 million annual budget that's far from fully endowed. At such a scale, it cannot entirely avoid grandiosity.

A dark ramp that descends 70 feet to just above bedrock previews Foundation Hall, which looks from above like a cavernous half-lighted archaeological dig. (Thinc Design and Local Projects are the lead exhibition-design firms.) It is dominated by a 36-foot-high steel column that was the last to be removed from the site. It is covered with mementos placed by ironworkers, rescue personnel and others.

The historical exhibit begins the morning of Sept. 11 with voices—radio announcements, voice mails and television clips of people just becoming aware of the first attack. The exhibition, by Layman Design, takes each attack in turn: the two in New York, the Pentagon, the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, and then looks back at the 1993 Trade Center bombing....Continue Reading

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