Living Histories: Curating the Continued Negative Health Effects of 9/11

The 9/11 Museum's rotating exhibition space has displayed the exhibition, “Dust: Illness and Advocacy after 9/11,” since 2023. It tells the story of the health effects and healthcare advocacy battles that began to surface post-9/11. This exhibition shows that the 9/11 Museum–a contemporary history museum–does not treat 9/11 as an event of the past but as an ongoing history. Contemporary histories such as these require constant updates and draw from countless curatorial objects. Unlike many historical exhibitions, this topic is happening in real time. How, then, do contemporary history museums and their curators tell histories anchored in the present? To break apart this exhibition and clearly analyze what it tells us about memorial museums, I apply what Amy Sodaro suggests are the three main criteria to look for when discussing memorial museums. First, the museum function. This refers to the museum's ability to use objects, ephemera, and personal accounts to show the history to an audience. Is the museum using story-telling rather than simply stating facts to create a more engaging experience? Second, the memorial function. This determines how well the institution provides the audience with a space to grieve and remember those affected by the event. For this research, I use the memorial function to determine whether or not the exhibition can and should function as a memorial. Finally, the ability to communicate “never again” to an audience. This criterion is important given that many memorial museums are founded with this message of education and moral learning at their core. How can an ongoing history represent the idea of “never again”? By looking at this exhibition through this lens, I found that, though the exhibition works in the museum as an educational tool, it lacks the distance from the event to truly become a memorial. Something that is still happening cannot be memorialized. “Never again” cannot be applied. My research proves that contemporary histories require a new set of curatorial methods to represent the ongoing as well as the recent past. Furthermore, it opens up a discussion on how to present living, current histories that project into the future. How museums pick and choose which of these current stories to tell creates a political narrative when memorial museums often strive to remain politically neutral. This new criteria could be labeled the “political function,” determining whether an exhibition linked to politics can be political within an apolitical institution.