9/11 museum depicts aftermath of attacks

The shrines of candles and flowers and the broken pieces of steel standing at Ground Zero became iconic images of post-Sept. 11 New York in the weeks after the terrorist attack.

Visitors to the planned National September 11 Memorial and Museum will see re-creations of the vigils and makeshift memorials that sprang up around the city and the eight-month cleanup of the destroyed World Trade Center in exhibits focusing on New Yorkers' post-9/11 experience.

New renderings obtained by The Associated Press Thursday show a woman paying respects over dozens of candles, flowers, teddy bears and a construction worker's helmet. The homemade shrines covered the city in the weeks after the attacks, particularly at Manhattan's Union Square, where relatives came with pictures of their missing loved ones.

Another exhibit focusing on the cleanup of the trade center site by thousands of Ground Zero workers will project images of workers at the site onto huge remnants of steel from the destroyed Twin Towers.

A centerpiece of one exhibit will be a three-pronged trident column from a trade center tower rising out of a pile of recovered steel, with an image of the same column projected onto it.

The exhibits will be enhanced with the recorded testimony of witnesses from around the globe, captured in real time by cell phone messages, radio transmissions and video, and in recorded interviews with rescue workers, evacuees and others within minutes of the collapse, museum director Alice Greenwald said Thursday.

Visitors will pass through a "Where were you on 9/11?" gallery, where a choreographed multimedia program will offer recorded recollections of what people across the world were doing and how they learned of the 2001 terrorist attack.

Visitors will be able to hear personal stories from volunteers and survivors, and those who lived or worked nearby.

Museum officials presented the latest exhibits for the museum - slated to open in 2012 - Thursday. The museum has a $45-million budget, according to the 9/11 Memorial's exhibition summary. The downtown rebuilding agency gave $2.2 million to help fund the exhibits.