The National WWII Museum has announced via social media that the “D-Day Invasion of Normandy” exhibit will close for a major overhaul on February 24. This is significant to the museum and its visitors because the exhibit was the inaugural gallery when the D-Day Museum first opened in 2000, and remained an important link to the founding era. The gallery contains artifacts that veterans had given to cofounder Stephen Ambrose, which with the oral histories he had gathered for his books, were the inspiration for creating a New Orleans museum in the first place.
The exhibit is also a good milepost to measure how museum storytelling has evolved since its debut. The invasion itself is depicted with tiny models of planes and ships in a small alcove, seen from the enemy’s perspective as the massive force approached the beach (photo above). That modest diorama seems quaint compared to the interactive multimedia displays in the much newer Liberation Pavilion, say, yet the miniature display is nonetheless one of the most photographed things in the museum.
In his 2025 memoir Preserving the Legacy: Creating the National WWII Museum, cofounder Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller credited the 1994 commemoration in Normandy of D-Day’s 50th anniversary for jump-starting what would become the National WWII Museum. At the time, the nascent museum’s location was still to be on the lakefront. Soon after, a downtown setting was the goal.
“As a European historian, I understood D-Day’s importance as the turning point of the war, but, in that moment in 1994, the Museum project became more personal and daunting to me,” Mueller wrote. “Though I had been to Normandy several times before, I now began to grasp more fully the enormous responsibility and challenge before us.
“Re-creating all the drama and tragedies that took place on those beaches, or in the planes and ships sent to do battle, was impossible. But somehow, the Museum had to find innovative ways to immerse visitors in these stories. The exhibits, media, artifacts, and personal stories had to help them see and feel what it was like to be in battle. We had to accomplish this in a Museum some 5,000 miles from the scene of the battle. We needed to surface moments when the fear, courage, motivation, and sacrifice of those who fought at Normandy would touch the hearts and minds of visitors. We would have to show visitors a battle that was at once horrific but also necessary, as the war had to be won at all costs. Our galleries had to be historically authentic, depicting the good and the bad. Most importantly, the future Museum would have to create a transformative, emotional, and meaningful experience for all visitors, young and old alike, long after all WWIl veterans had passed from the scene.”
The museum announced the renovation at its 25th anniversary celebration in June 2025.
“A lot of the core stories will remain the same,” said Stephen Watson, the museum’s president and CEO. “We have a lot of new artifacts, a lot of new oral histories, new archival footage, so we have more resources now.”
He added: “One of the rules of engagement I said to the team when we started was first do no harm.”
The reopening isn’t expected until 2027. Images from the current exhibit are below.
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