January 27, 2014, - 1:36 pm
WHOA! Would You Pay $24 to See the 9/11 Museum?
Is it just me . . . or is the planned $24.00 admission fee for the 9/11 Museum very steep? The museum, the National Sept. 11 Memorial Museum, is scheduled to open soon, but clearly they don’t want this accessible to most people, especially in the Obamaconomy. Most people cannot afford to throw away $24.00–$96 for a family of four. I’ve never heard of such a steep museum admission fee. Have you?
And, on top of that, I’ll bet the museum is chock full of political correctness. Do you think they’ll note anything about Islamic terrorism and actually use the word Islam? I’ll bet they don’t. I’m sure the museum is sanitized and whitewashed of all of that, as pictures of it seem to be a collection of junk, including damaged fire trucks, notes seeking missing relatives . . . everything except what 9/11 was really about: an Islamic attack on America and Americans. Not “sanitized” is the giant annual cost they claim it will take to keep the museum running. Another PC boondoggle in the making:
The National Sept. 11 Memorial Museum will charge adults a $24 admission fee when it opens this spring, the institution announced Thursday evening. Last year, museum officials said the institution would charge an entrance fee of between $20 and $25 to offset the cost of running the institution. Families affected by the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 won’t be charged and there will be three free hours for the general public each week. Various discounts will also be available for seniors, schools and other groups. The Memorial will continue to be free.
Still, the prospect of charging a fee to enter the museum was controversial. Family members of those killed on Sept. 11 believe it should be free so everyone has the opportunity to understand the events of that day.”The 9/11 Memorial does not yet receive government support for ongoing operations as many other important museums of our national history do,” said Joseph Daniels, president of the museum and memorial, in a statement. “A general admission ticket of $24 will help fulfill our obligation to commemorate and preserve the history of 9/11. It will also enable educational programming that will teach the nature of and responsibility for the special freedoms we have.” He added that the fee will help ensure that the Memorial remains free.
The 2013 annual operating budget for the Memorial and Museum is projected to be $63 million. By instituting a fee, the museum hopes it will be able to generate about 60% to 70% of its budget through earned revenues, which will also include items like gift shop sales. It will continue to raise private money and strive to get some government funding to operate the museum.
Sixty-three million bucks to run a museum each year? Good luck with that. It won’t last. What the heck are they spending that much money on–a marble and gold tiled Muslim “reflection room” mosque?
Tags: 9/11 Museum, 9/11 museum admission, 9/11 museum budget, National Sept. 11 Memorial Museum
Well, they say that those affected by 9/11 won’t be charged — that means just about all of us, so hopefully we can all get in for free. But I do think it’s OK to charge the wealthy among us at higher rates, so they pay their fair share, just as they do for income taxes, Social Security, and so on.
Museum charges are going up though, on a more serious note. $24 is high, especially for exhibits of apparently low quality, but some of the premiere museums are inching up to those kinds of prices.
Little Al on January 27, 2014 at 2:29 pm