MANHATTAN — A majority of New Yorkers believe the 9/11 Museum at the rebuilt World Trade Center should be free, according to a new poll out Thursday.
Of the city voters polled by Quinnipiac, 75 percent believe the museum should be free of charge when it opens next year. Among those who agree that they should charge, 86 percent feel the proposed $25 ticket is too expensive.
“The 9/11 Memorial, which opens in a few weeks, is free, and New Yorkers think the 9/11 Memorial Museum, which opens next year, should be free as well,” Quinnipiac University Polling Institute director Maurice Carroll said.
“And just about everyone says that the $25 admission charge which was floated recently is too high.”
Museum president Joe Daniels announced last month that the museum will charge a fee, likely in the $20 to $25 range, which he likened to the suggested entry fee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the charge for MoMA, which just announced its increasing its fee to $25 from $20 this September.
The money will be used to run the museum and maintain the 8-acre, tree-shaded memorial plaza, which is opening this September 11 with waterfalls in the Twin Towers footprints.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has voiced support for the decision, arguing that New Yorkers who already pay $12 to see a movie shouldn't mind paying twice that to visit the museum.
"Given people pay 12, 15 bucks to go to the movies in a lot of parts of the city, if you have a nominal charge that helps pay the bills, I certainly have no objections to that," he said in June.
The poll of 1,234 registered voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent.
