The Battle For Ground Zero, Part XXXIV

The New York Times reports on the progress of the actual Memorial Museum, which is a separate organization from the IFC/The Drawing Center and the cultural project.

Once again, we learn that the museum will occupy about 110,000 square feet of space, which is far smaller than the cultural center space (which is what I was saying all along). The boundaries of the facilities at Ground Zero aren't finalized, but are close enough to give a rough idea of the square footage for each component.

The museum doesn't have a director in place, and the collection of items for display hasn't been finalized, though there is a huge list of items available.

Almost certainly, it will be organized thematically, beginning with a depiction of life at the towers before and between the attacks of Feb. 26, 1993, and Sept. 11, 2001. Exhibits following that would depict the events of 9/11, rendered graphically and unflinchingly (visitors may bypass this exhibit); and the rescue efforts and relief work, the outpouring of support and the broader aftermath.

Galleries, corridors and overlooks will thread through a three-dimensional subterranean labyrinth in a gently sloping descent, skirting the memorial pools, ducking under an electrical distribution room, and edging around the chiller plant and PATH tracks.

At one critical juncture, visitors will be standing below and between the imposing volumes of the north and south memorial pools. This inverse form of the voids above is intended to convey something of the enormity of the site and to mark the towers' place.

The journey will end in a great chamber some 40 feet high and 240 feet long, just a few feet above bedrock, with sheared-off column remnants from the north tower on one side and a section of the rugged slurry wall on the other, lighted from a skylight high above.

On this level, within the footprint of the north tower (96 percent of which will be preserved, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey), 9,100 unidentified remains will be kept in a repository maintained by the chief medical examiner. Visitors will not be permitted within, though they will find a contemplation room nearby with a symbolic vessel and a view open to the sky.

I want the part in bold to sink in. The whole calamity of 9/11 was the destruction of the towers and the murder of nearly 3,000 people in those towers and on the ground. That is what is at stake here, not what some namby pamby cultural center thinks it can get away with in the name of cultural and artistic freedom - and yes, I'm talking about the IFC and The Drawing Center.

UPDATE:
Discarded Lieshighlights the fact that the actual narrative of the day that the terrorist attack occurred, 9/11/2001, is going to be graphic and show the footage that the networks refused to air in the days, let alone weeks, months, and years following the attacks. People need to remember what the terrorists did on 9/11, and sanitizing it because someone might get upset looking at those images is the wrong thing to do.