“The 9/11 Tribute Museum in Lower Manhattan closed on Aug. 17 [2022], just short of the 21st anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks. New York has lost a unique testimonial to the darkest day in its modern history. The community of survivors, first responders, family members and witnesses that built it is losing its second home.
The Tribute Museum has no connection with the vast official statement that is the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. ‘Tribute,’ as its close-knit team calls it, was founded by the September 11th Families’ Association. …
Over the first 13 years of its existence, the museum received more than five million visitors — nearly half tourists from 141 countries—and its guides gave more than 500,000 tours. Then Covid-19 struck. Pre-pandemic, Tribute averaged 300,000 visitors per year; in 2021 it had just 26,000. The museum had no endowment; it relied mainly on admission income, and it had last been in the black in 2016. So in March,… [the museum] announced that, unable to cover its $2.5 million operating budget and unsuccessful in its appeals to New York state officials and foundations, the museum would close without help — help that it never found. …
Tribute was a genuine expression of New York’s living history, born from the loss and the defiant pride of the ordinary people whose lives, like so many on that terrible day, were changed in extraordinary and lasting ways. Now it is gone.”
– Dominic Green, “The 9/11 Tribute Museum: Loss Compounded,” wsj.com, August 31, 2022