9/11 museum exhibits show NY vigils, WTC cleanup

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 memorial 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 on 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.

An 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, with an image of the same column projected onto it.

Visitors will pass through a “Where were you on 9/11?” gallery, hearing recorded recollections of what people across the world were doing and how they learned of the 2001 terrorist attack.

Museum officials presented the latest exhibits for the museum — slated to open in 2012 — at a Thursday meeting of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

The exhibits “will chronicle not only the shared witness to the horrific events of Sept. 11, but the extraordinary compassion and dedication that were demonstrated time and again during the days, weeks and months following the horrific attacks,” museum director Alice Greenwald said Thursday.

The downtown rebuilding agency gave $2.2 million to help fund the exhibits.