Press Release - The International Freedom Center

June, 2005

IFC Myths and Facts

Myth:
The International Freedom Center (IFC) will have more space than the World Trade Center Memorial Center.

Fact:
Early plans actually called for both to have roughly the same square footage of exhibit space. More recent plans call for the galleries in the Memorial Center 9/11 museum to be roughly twice as large as those in the IFC. In fact, the Memorial/Memorial Center, including the "Reflecting Absence" pools, where the names of the honored dead will be inscribed, will be more than twice the size of the entire Cultural Center building in which the IFC will be located. And the Cultural Center will also house a visitor center, a large ventilation system for the new transit station and perhaps the Drawing Center, as well as the International Freedom Center.

Myth:
The IFC is inconsistent with what 9/11 families want to see at the World Trade Center Memorial.

Fact:
The Mission Statement for the Memorial, which was crafted in 2003 and was the product of very substantial input from many family members, calls on us, through the Memorial, to "strengthen our resolve to preserve freedom, and inspire an end to hatred, ignorance, and intolerance." That is what the IFC is about. A clear majority of family members on the WTC Memorial Foundation Board support the IFC and this Mission Statement.

Myth:
The IFC will feature "atrocities."

Fact:
No, it will not. We will rise out of the atrocity of 9/11 to highlight humanity's quest for freedom. We are working hard to develop our exhibits, but we know that the IFC will feature the repeated triumph of freedom over oppression.

Myth:
The IFC will blame America.

Fact:
No, it will not. The IFC will celebrate freedom and America's role as champion of freedom. We haven't settled on specific exhibits, but we will not "blame America" or attack champions of freedom. Any suggestion that we'll feature anti-American programming has got it all wrong. We are proud patriots. We will honor different points of view about freedom, but no one, left or right, should get the idea we are here to dishonor America and the heroes of 9/11. We will honor them and their predecessors in mankind's struggle for freedom.

Myth:
The IFC and its building are somehow a late entry on the site.

Fact:
Daniel Libeskind's site master plan, announced more than two years ago, called for a museum where the IFC building will be built. The selection of the master plan was in part the product of the "Listening to the City" process that included thousands of people, and hundreds of family members. The IFC itself was publicly designated for the site in June 2004.

Myth:
The IFC leans left.

Fact:
The IFC is entirely non-partisan and outside of politics. It has enlisted nearly 100 advisers for its museum and service programs. These are bi-partisan. They do include people from leading human rights organizations. But also three former top White House officials from the George W. Bush Administration, as well as a former top aide to Senator Bob Dole and the director of the conservative Hoover Institution. Isn't that kind of balance what America is about?

Myth:
The IFC will excuse or rationalize the 9/11 attacks, either in exhibits or in evening discussion programs.

Fact:
No it won't. The attacks were inexcusable, barbaric, and cannot be defended. Period.

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