Okay, here goes my first Correctly done On The Media post. The part of the show I'm focused on is the part about the World Trade Center terrorist attack. I listened as Brooke walked through the museum while describing her experience.
The museum opened in May of the year 2014. "The National September 11 Memorial Museum serves as the country's principle institution concerned with exploring the implications of the events of 9/11, documenting the impact of those events and exploring 9/11's continuing significance."  Brooke talks to [man] at one point about how they made decisions about the design of the museum, and that was the part I thought was VERY interesting. He talks about how they let the large space of the building speak for itself to describe the enormity of the event, and about how difficult it was to decide how severe to make it, while protecting the emotional wellbeing of those visitors who experienced the event, and those who know next to nothing about it. Can you imagine the emotionality of going through all the information to do with the attack and deciding how much to disclose to the patrons of the museum? I'm thinking about how emotional it was for me to think about the events of that day. While I was exploring 9/11 related information online, I was overwhelmed by what was out there. How much harder is it for people who were there? for the people who were nearby? People who lost family members? The struggle to balance the experiences of those people is the museum is mind boggling.
It's interesting to note, though, that when Brooke was there there weren't a lot of tears. Is this to do with the apathy of society these days? Meaningful healing? or the onset of forgetting? I feel like it's a combination of both healing and forgetting. This country has been through disasters before; natural disasters, war, poverty. This, I think is the natural process of healing. Event, immediate reaction, long term reaction, memorial, "museumification", neglect.
Kinda funny that they have a gift shop though, am I right?