New museum opening at Statue of Liberty

NEW YORK — A new museum opening at the Statue of Liberty is giving visitors another opportunity to explore its history and the impact the iconic structure has had on the world. The 26,000-square-foot museum on Liberty Island, scheduled to open to the public on Thursday, is the new home for the statue’s original torch and other artifacts which had previously been in a smaller museum space inside the statue’s pedestal, which is accessible only to the fraction of the more than 4 million annual visitors who manage to get limited-availability statue entry tickets. “We wanted to enhance the feeling that it’s really special to be in proximity to the statue.” Inside, there are three main gallery spaces, starting with a theater where visitors walk through as they watch a film that goes into how the idea for the statue came about, the efforts that went into its making in France and its arrival in the New York harbor, as well as talking about what liberty meant then and what it means in the current day. “It is based on this idea that liberty was a critical thing that we all had to struggle for, so that idea had to continue as a core value in this experience.” In conjunction with the museum’s opening, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, which spearheaded the effort to raise the $100 million in private-sector funds for the project, also developed an app with Apple to bring aspects of the museum to people who cannot visit in person.