Remains of the Day At the 9/11 museum,history is preserved in memories and debris

摘要

Only a portion of the new 9/11 memorial Museum, the entry pavilion, extends above-ground, but right away it says something about the mission of this museum. Don't go expecting a serene, classical foyer. On the outside, the building is a network of diagonal bands of steel and glass. Inside, it leaves visible an irregular web of crisscrossing truss work. Though it has its decorative purposes, that jangling matrix signals from the start that this is a museum that must acknowledge a historic upheaval, a rupture in the fabric of time. And with that it offers the first hint of how the museum, which opens to the public May 21, differs from the nearby 9/11 Memorial. With its reflecting pools and waterfalls, the memorial is designed to commemorate the dead and console the living. The museum does that in places too, beautifully sometimes, but it has a more complicated job-reopening the wound.