/11 Memorial Museum Pulls Platter From Gift Shop
The National September 11 Memorial Museum store is no longer displaying a ceramic platter shaped like the USA, with hearts marking where the four hijacked planes struck.
In response to criticism about certain items sold at the gift shop, the museum said it will get more input from 9/11 family members who sit on the museum foundation board to help vet the merchandise, reports TheWall Street Journal.
Since it opened May 21, the museum has taken heat for selling souvenirs like hoodies with the image of the Twin Towers, stuffed animal search dogs and jewelry.
Some people have also criticized the museum for its decision to have a gift shop in the location where 3,000 people were killed in the 2001 attack.
Joe Daniels, president of the memorial foundation, told the Journal that merchandise will be reviewed inside the store to see the items in context.
“The space matters,” Daniels told the Journal. “This is a good reminder that as much ‘success’ as we’ve had we have to remember that the sensitivity around 9/11 is so high.”
USA TODAY Network has requested comment from the 9/11 Museum.
Gothamist first pointed out the platter, which it called a cheese plate. The platter has stars over the locations of the 9/11 attacks at New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and Shanksville, Pa.
The Journal reports the item was no longer on display as of Tuesday.
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Arrangement Of The Victims’ Names
The names of 2,983 victims are inscribed on 152 bronze parapets on the memorial pools: 2,977 killed in the September 11 attacks and six killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The names are arranged according to an algorithm, creating “meaningful adjacencies” based on relationshipsproximity at the time of the attacks, company or organization affiliations and in response to about 1,200 requests from family members. Software made by Local Projects implemented the arrangement. All names are stylized with Optima typeface for a “balanced appearance”.
The names of the employees and visitors in the North Tower , the passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 11 , and the employees and a visitor of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing are around the perimeter of the North Pool. The names of the employees and visitors in the South Tower , the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 175 , the employees, visitors, and bystanders in the immediate vicinity of the North and South Towers, the first responders who died during rescue operations, the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 and American Airlines Flight 77 , and the employees at the Pentagon are around the perimeter of the South Pool. Company names are not included, but company employees and visitors are listed together. Passengers on the four flights are listed under their flight numbers, and first responders with their units.
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The museum store at the September 11 Memorial in May
The offending U.S. map cheese platter, with hearts marking the sites of all three 9/11 plane crashes, has been yanked from the store’s shelves. But the shop at the recently opened National September 11 Memorial Museum remains the most fascinating store in the city.
I didn’t fully understand the frenzy that erupted a few weeks ago, when the media-sphere exploded with shock and disgust over the stuffed rescue dogs, 9/11 water bottles and Survivor Tree mouse pads sold at the gift store. After all, the museum’s foundation has been selling much of this merchandise for years at an off-site souvenir store near Ground Zero.
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New York’s 9/11 Museum Pulls Controversial Item From Gift Shop
1 Min Read
NEW YORK – The National September 11 Memorial Museum gift shop has pulled an item that provoked cries of protest for its insensitivity: a U.S. shaped ceramic cheese platter marking the three spots where the hijacked airplanes went down, it said on Thursday.
The commemorative tray that is meant for display, not serving, has been removed, a spokesperson for the museum said in an email.
The new museum in lower Manhattan won mostly positive reviews from local media and those with personal ties to the attacks alike when it opened earlier this month, after years of delays and controversy.
But the museums gift shop, which sells items such as fire department apparel and rescue vests for dogs, has come under criticism from some family members of those who died in the attacks as well as the first responders who worked in the rubble of the fallen twin towers.
Reporting By Edith Honan: editing by Gunna Dickson
/11 Museum Shop Gifts Evoke Outrage
I honestly dont think its appropriate selling scarves to commercialize the deaths of 3,000 people” Brooklyn state Sen. Martin Golden
NEW YORK National September 11 Memorial & Museum previewers had a common reaction to the items that were sold at the facilitys gift shop, ranging from dog vests with a FDNY label to jewelry molded from the leaves of a pear tree that survived the disaster: Tactless.
I honestly dont think its appropriate selling scarves to commercialize the deaths of 3,000 people, said Brooklyn state Sen. Martin Golden, in the New York Post. I dont think its right.
The boutique sells a little bit of everything: toys, books, silk scarves with images of the Twin Towers that last, going for almost $100, the New York Post reported. The shop also sells raincoats for dogs that are fashioned like FDNY cloaks and Pandora-designed charms that sell for fully $65. And thats on top of the $24 per person price tag just to get into the museum, the New York Post reported.
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/11 Museum Gift Shop: Hoodies And Anger
At the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which opened to the public on Wednesday, visitors can view the wreckage of a New York Fire Department engine, a steel beam from one of the World Trade Center towers, and photographs of those who died in the attacks.
When they’re done, they can wander through the museum’s gift shop and buy 9/11 coffee mugs and t-shirts, toy fire engines, a “darkness hoodie” emblazoned with the outline of the Twin Towers, a silk scarf with the New York skyline and buttons featuring pictures of the “dogs of 9/11”.
“To me, it’s the crassest, most insensitive thing to have a commercial enterprise at the place where my son died,” Diane Horning, whose son worked in the World Trade Center, told the New York Post. She notes that the memorial features a room where the unidentified remains of victims of the attack are stored.
“Here is essentially our tomb of the unknown,” she said. “To sell baubles I find quite shocking and repugnant.”
Jim Riches, father of a firefighter who died on 9/11, also feels offended. “Basically, they’re making money off of my son’s dead body,”he told CNN. “I think that’s disgusting.”
The juxtaposition of the solemn and the commercial has prompted a vigorous debate in the media about the gift shop’s decorum.
“What, no World Trade Center shot glasses or firefighter teddy bears?”asks Townhall’s Cortney O’Brien. “How can this museum stand to turn Americans’ pain into profit?”
He continues:
Search And Rescue Plush Dog
Description: “In response to the events of September 11, 2001, twenty US& R task forces and their canine teams worked at the World Trade Center site, and five teams responded to the Pentagon. Our Search & Rescue soft plush dogs are available in 3 breeds: Yellow Labrador, Black Labrador & German Shepherd.”
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Controversies Surrounding The Memorial
Mohammad Salman Hamdani
Although victims’-family groups agreed that names would be grouped by workplace or other affiliation, NYPD cadet Mohammad Salman Hamdani was not included with the other first responders or the other victims whose remains were found in the wreckage of the North Tower. His name appears on the memorial’s panel S-66 for World Trade Center victims , with those who did not fit into the groups created by the memorial committee or who had a loose connection to the World Trade Center. Hamdani’s mother, Talat, has campaigned for the Memorial to acknowledge her son as a police cadet and first responder. Hamdani received a full police-department funeral after his body was found , and 204th Street in Bayside, Queens, the street on which he lived was renamed in his honor.
Arabic-language brochures
Although the memorial’s brochures were initially translated into at least ten languages, these languages did not include Arabic. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee questioned this decision in letters to memorial directors, and ADC director of communications and advocacy Raed Jarrar said: “Our fear is that there is a political intention behind the exclusion”. A memorial representative told the New York Post, “As Arabic-speaking visitors currently represent our 25th-largest group, Arabic translations are not yet among the initial foreign-language editions.”
/11 Memorial Museum Gift Shop Draws The Ire Of Many: ‘it’s A Disgrace’
May 19, 2014 / 6:09 PM / CBS New York
NEW YORK There is a debate brewing over whether it’s appropriate for the 9/11 museum gift shop to sell souvenirs at the exact spot where thousands of people died.
As CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer reported on Monday, visitors walked out of the ground zero museum with shopping bags holding souvenir purchases from the gift shop. They could be anything from a stuffed dog to police and firefighter charms by Pandora to a scarf with an imprint of the World Trade Center before the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
GALLERY:9/11 Museum Dedication
“It’s a disgrace. The selling of trinkets is a disgrace,” said Ted Stankewicz, a retired firefighter from Ladder 119. “This is a place to honor people. Civilians passed away. Civil servants passed away. This is kind of sacred ground. This is not a money-maker. Shame on them.”
“It is a little disrespectful to be selling scarves and jewelry. It’s not what this is about, you know? It should be run like the national monuments around the country, by the federal government. But until that happens, unfortunately, we’re going to be faced with this,” added another firefighter, who chose to remain anonymous.
Retired firefighter Ron Parker wasn’t nearly as critical.
“It’s not a gift shop on a grave site. It’s terrible to depict it that way. It’s a bookstore with a great many heroes. There’s a great many stories about a great many heroes in that bookstore,” Parker said.
The museum opens to the public on Wednesday.
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Why Victims’ Families Are Furious About 9/11 Memorial Museum
The museum features a gift shop, as well as human remains.
May 19, 2014& #151 — The 9/11 Memorial Museum, set to open to the public this Friday, is at the center of an intense debate.
The New York City-based museum costs $24 to enter, and the gift shop offers pricey coffee mugs, T-shirts, key chains and stuffed animals. A separate part of the museum also houses some 8,000 unidentified human remains from the terrorist attacks.
Those juxtapositions tribute and commercialism, trinkets amid tragedy have victims families fuming.
Jim Riches doesnt plan on visiting. His son Jimmy, a firefighter, was 29 when he died in the attacks. It took more than six months to find some of Jimmys remains. The rest, Riches believes, are unidentified and in the repository.
My sons friends are going to have to pay $24 to go down and pay their respects, Riches said. I think thats a disgrace. Its the only cemetery in the world where you have to pay a fee to get in.
Diane and Kurt Horning tells ABC News theyre appalled by what theyre calling greed and commercialism. They lost their son Matt Horning in the twin towers.
I wouldnt expect such an intrusion at Arlington Cemetery or at the Pentagon Memorial or at any cemetery, they said.
In a statement, museum representatives tell ABC News that the museum receives no government funding and relies on private fundraising, gracious donations and revenue from ticketing and carefully selected keepsake items for retail.
Are The 9/11 Museum’s Commemorative Toys And Hoodies A Step Too Far
There is a gift shop at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, which opens this week in New York. Should that be surprising? It is a museum, after all, a place that will no doubt be visited by many tourists who will want to take home souvenirs. The exhibition also needs their money, on top of what it receives in donations and admission fees, in order to meet the $63m annual cost of staying open. Even on a project of such sensitivity, this must have seemed like common sense at the planning stage.
Some of the early visitors, however, who come from among those with a personal connection to 9/11, do not see it that way. “I think it’s a money-making venture to support inflated salaries,” Diane Horning told the New York Post, “and they’re willing to do it over my son’s dead body.” In this case, those words are almost literally true. The museum is built underground beside a “remains repository” containing roughly 8,000 unidentified body parts, quite possibly including Horning’s son Matthew, whose remains were never found.
Here are four more museums with a sensitive line in souvenirs:
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Controversies Surrounding The Museum
Little Syria
A neighborhood that was once called Little Syria, a center of Christian Arab immigrant life in the United States beginning in the 1880s, once existed just south of the site of the World Trade Center. The cornerstone of St. Joseph’s Lebanese was found under the rubble, next to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at 157 Cedar Street. Both congregations were founded by Christians who had fled Ottoman oppression in the Middle East. Activists lobbied for the Museum to include a permanent exhibit about the neighborhood to “help the thousands of tourists who visit the site to understand that immigrants from Ottoman lands have played a patriotic role in the country’s history,” arguing that it was important to memorialize the multiethnic character of “Little Syria.” The old Christian Syrian neighborhood was demolished in the 1940s due to the construction of the BrooklynBattery Tunnel.
Never Forget
General admission tickets to the museum are $24, a price which has raised concerns. Michael Bloomberg agreed, encouraging people to “write your congressman” for more federal funding.
Placement of unidentified remains
Silk Scarf Lunchtime On The Wtc Plaza
Description: “This scarf features Paula Barr’s panoramic photograph, entitled ‘Lunchtime on the WTC Plaza,’ of downtown workers and visitors gathering on the World Trade Center’s plaza, which sometimes served as a public space for concerts and other outdoor programs. The vast scale of the Twin Towers, the reflective surfaces and striking gothic arches created by the steel tridents inspired photographers to depict them from every perspective.”
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The Museum Of The Great War
Books about the first world war are the main theme in Péronne in northern France, near the site of the Battle of the Somme. There are also posters and DVDs, however, and even model aircraft and toy soldiers.
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Years After 9/11 Memorial Site Causes Controversy
The front page of The Sunday Independent that weekend
The Irish Independent front page on September 12th 2001
9/11 Museum, New York
9/11 Memorial Museum Gift Shop
9/11 Memorial Museum Gift Shop
13 years after the tragic events of 9/11, Ed Power looks at the memorial museum built in place where 2,983 people perished.
It looks like any gift shop at any tourist trap in the world. There are t-shirts, postcards, mugs and more. As you browse New York Fire Department merchandise, negotiate endless racks of hoodies and caps, you have to remind yourself where you are: at Ground Zero in Manhattan where, 13 years ago today, thousands died as the Towers came down.
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How the September 11th attacks made the headlinesHere is a selection of reports about the attacks on the World Tade Centre that appeared in the Irish Independent the following day– I want to nuke ’em all, whoever they are, says devastated Marine
On the anniversary of the worst terrorist atrocity suffered by the United States, the 9/11 Museum has become a lightning rod for Americans attempting, more than a decade on, to make sense of the World Trade Centre attacks. To some, locating a $700million glass facility in the shadow of the original towers constitutes a howling gesture of disrespect towards the thousands who lost their lives – the remains of hundreds of victims have to this day never been retrieved – and their families.
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/11 Museum Opens To Outrage Over Gift Shop Cocktail Reception
The National September 11 Memorial Museum opened this week to outrage among some victims’ families over a gift shop at the site and a black-tie reception held close to the unidentified remains of people killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
And more controversy has erupted with news that a restaurant is opening soon inside the museum offering an array of local, seasonal fare in a relaxing and comfortable environment, according to the museum guide.
Its the crassest, most insensitive thing to have a commercial enterprise at the place where my son died, Diane Horning told the New York Post. She and husband Kurt never recovered the remains of their son Matthew, 26, a database administrator at the Twin Towers.
The gift shop is selling fire and police T-shirts and caps, earrings molded from trees that survived the destruction, United We Stand blankets and even FDNY vests for dogs.
But spokesman Anthony Guido said the shop is essential to keep the museum going, since it receives no federal or state funds and is financed entirely by private donations. Between 60 and 70 percent of the museum’s annual operating cost of about $60 million will come from revenue generated from the gift shop and the museum’s admission fee, which is $24 for an adult, he told NBCNews.com.
