The September 11th, 2001 Museum Review: A Spectacle of Grief
Imagine being able to relive the memories of the tragic event in September 11th, 2001 anytime you want. Imagine being able to physically see the remains of multiple concrete floors, walls, and furniture previously crushed together. First opened in May 2014, the 9/11 Museum serves to aim for educational and experimental purposes, complementing the infamous Memorial where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.[1] This essay will focus on the museum itself, and examine how the museum tries to encounter with the stories and the aftermath of the tragic event that changed the course of history.[2] The essay also looks into the museum’s conventions, methods of display, as well as the implications that are developed from gift shops.
One of the most memorable displays in the museum is the staircase which led many survivors to safety during that time, also known as the “Survivors’ Stairs”.[3] All visitors will encounter the “Survivors’ Stairs” as they descend to the main level of the museum through the parallel staircase. This ingrains the experience of the survivors fleeing out of the building to the visitors, making them envision the moment, whether they are ready or not. Moreover, as visitors get to the main level, also known as “Ground Zero”, they are immediately greeted by Tom Joyce and Spencer Finch’s artwork made of recovered steel from the World Trade Center, featuring a quote from Virgil: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time”, which commemorates the 2,983 lives that were lost from the attacks.[4]
This repetition of trauma that confronts the visitors inflate the sense of participation.[5] Trauma, which triggers abrupt and intrusive memories of the past, is symbolized and represented through artefacts and images displayed in the museum.[6] But while this is happening, it is important to take note that the mass experience is mediated selectively by curators and designers, as they are the ones who decide what is significant and how each item should be presented.[7] How items and images are displayed in the museum is crucial, as they are valued by how well they make visible what is invisible, which is the experience of the tragedy itself.[8]
To make sure the experience is enhanced, the museum uses methods of display that trigger the human senses. Firstly, each exhibition have speakers playing various sounds like the victims’ last phone calls with loved ones, the survivors’ recall of the event, and eyewitnesses’ recollections. Secondly, apart from displaying the building’s and airplanes’ remnants, there are a variety of photographs and videos in life-sized curved screens. Ranging from gut-wrenching to heart-aching images, visitors are left feeling completely overwhelmed with melancholy. The whole museum is surrounded by distressing voices and images echoing through the walls constantly reminding visitors of the loss and the grief the event has left to the nation.
At the same time, adult visitors are charged $24 for the museum entry, which essentially means that the history, artefacts, and story of the tragedy are commodified. Apart from this, the museum has its own gift shop, where FDNY and NYPD t-shirts are being sold for $22, caps for $19, earrings for up to $68, as well as mugs, pins, and fridge magnets. One victim’s family have said that having the gift shop is “the most insensitive thing to have a commercial enterprise at the place where [her] son died.” Besides the shop, the museum has its own café, selling food and beverages for visitors as they are not allowed to bring any from outside. Additionally, around eight-thousand unidentified body parts remain stored in the museum’s underground repository, which emphasizes on the museum’s insensitivity as visitors literally walk over the repository.[9]
However, there is a paradox that comes along with this intimately repeated scenes of trauma. The traumatic repetition develops an enigmatic quality in which the traumatized become “haunted by the literal return by the event” that has been embraced by narratives of heroism.[10] In this case, heroism is represented as the policemen, firemen, and the United States’ army. Moreover, it is also believed that in terms of museums and artefacts, trauma from the past will essentially prevent future forms of racism and tragic affairs,[11] which brings up the topic of race and discrimination. A portion of its space is dedicated to inform visitors on the terrorist group that attacked the country, Al-Qaeda. With detailed accounts and photographs regarding the Muslim terrorists, the museum displays a persistent attitude towards the religion.
Within a year, the museum has added an exhibition called “The Hunt for Bin Laden”, where other attacks around the world was linked with 9/11, as well as demonstrating how its leader, Osama Bin Laden, was caught by the United States’ army and its former president, Barack Obama. In a sense, the exhibition initiates gratitude towards the US army, embracing heroism as mentioned previously. However, this raises concerns as museums are typically designed to share reliable information and knowledge for people. But its one-sided information gives proof for potential content manipulation, which influences the sense of righteousness in visitors.[12] With this, museums are understood through the eye of the beholder, therefore, its “truths” are subject to change.[13] Spreading knowledge about Muslim terrorists this way creates a distance for Muslim and Middle-Eastern visitors. With this, the museum produces feelings of cultural ownership, but also feelings of exclusion and inferiority.[14]
The way in which the museum was designed also plays a crucial role in determining how it makes visitors feel. In her book “Civilizing Rituals,” Carol Duncan writes that museums are very much like spaces of public rituals. The 9/11 Museum is designed for a special quality of attention for contemplation and learning, where visitors could escape the everyday life and look at the world in a different aspect. In fact, the underground museum has high ceilings, dark lighting, and large open spaces, creating a relaxing atmosphere that opposes the bustling city above. The designers have chosen neutral and calming colours to fill the museum, which balances the nature of its challenging content.[15] Moreover, visitors are also expected to behave in decorum, which are mostly taught amongst middle to upper classes, reinforced by security guards surround each corner of the museum, along with security cameras hidden. Additionally, as ritual experiences are seen as spiritually transformative, leaving customers feeling enlightened, the 9/11 museum does the same, however, producing a different feeling.[16] Instead of feeling illuminated, visitors will feel grief. Although the 9/11 museum is highly new, contemporary museum, its conventions and formality remains the same as traditional ritual spaces.
In Tony Bennett’s “The Exhibitionary Complex”, he theorizes that museums do not only exhibit fragile objects, but they also regulate disciplinary and power relations into society,[17] which can be proven by its expensive entrance fee, meaning that not everyone can gain entry to the museum. Disciplinary powers also come from the authorities’ power to regulate what is being shown and what is seen,[18] which signifies that museums are not neutral spaces, but are inherently subjective.[19]
The 9/11 Museum is ultimately a spectacle engulfing people into participation, and making sure they feel as if they were present at the event, watching it unfold.[20] Inside the museum, everything is happening. Visitors are overwhelmed with the variety of gut-wrenching images, sounds, and films, in addition to the stories told by those affected by the 9/11 tragedy. These forms of trauma are repeated throughout the halls of the museum, keeping visitors inside a bubble of grief and sympathy. Just like other museums, the 9/11 Museum serves the purpose of educating visitors, however, visitors are required to pay costly entrance fees for the experience, which highlights the social hierarchy that the museum promotes. Apart from this, an issue that the museum has yet to acknowledge is the insensitivity that the museum imposes for those who were personally affected by the event. Above all, the 9/11 Museum encapsulates what it means to be a contemporary museum.
NOTES:
[1] Philip Kennicott, “The 9/11 Memorial Museum Doesn’t Just Display Artifacts, It Ritualizes Grief on a Loop,” The Washington Post, WP Company, June 7, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/the-911-memorial-museum-doesnt-just-display-artifacts-it-ritualizes-grief-on-a-loop/2014/06/05/66bd88e8-ea8b-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html.
[2] “About the Museum,” National September 11 Memorial & Museum, National September 11 Memorial & Museum, www.911memorial.org/visit/museum/about-museum.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Kennicott, “The 9/11 Memorial Museum Doesn’t Just Display Artifacts, It Ritualizes Grief on a Loop,” The Washington Post, WP Company, June 7, 2014.
[6] Timothy P Brown, “Trauma, Museums, and the Future of Pedadogy,” Third Text 18, no. 4 (2004): 250.
[7] Ron Eyerman, Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3.
[8] Brown, “Trauma, Museums, and the Future of Pedagogy,” 254.
[9] Susan Edelman, “The 9/11 Museum’s Absurd Gift Shop,” New York Post, New York Post, 18 May 2014, nypost.com/2014/05/18/outrage-over-911-museum-gift-shops-crass-souvenirs/.
[10] Rinaldo Walcott, “Pedagogy and Trauma: The Middle Passage, Slavery, and the Problem of Creolization,” in Between Hope and Despair: Pedagogy and the Remembrance of Historical Trauma, ed. Roger I. Simon, Sharon Rosenberg, Claudia Eppert (Boston: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 135.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ka Tat Nixon Chen, “The Disciplinary Power of Museums,” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 3, no. 4, (July 2013): 407. DOI: 10.7763/IJSSH.2013.V3.271.
[13] Ibid., 408.
[14] Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London: Routledge, 1995), 4.
[15] Oliver Wainwright, “9/11 Memorial Museum: an Emotional Underworld beneath Ground Zero,” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, May 14, 2014, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/14/9-11-memorial-museum-new-york.
[16] Ibid., 13.
[17] Tony Bennett, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” New Formations no. 4 (Spring 1988): 73.
[18] Duncan, “Civilizing Ritual: Inside Public Art Museums,” 8–9.
[19] Ka Tat Nixon Chen, “The Disciplinary Power of Museums,” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 3, no. 4, (July 2013): 410. DOI: 10.7763/IJSSH.2013.V3.271.
[20] Kennicott, “The 9/11 Memorial Museum Doesn’t Just Display Artifacts, It Ritualizes Grief on a Loop,” The Washington Post, WP Company, June 7, 2014.
