Museum of the City of New York the incoming administration of Michael Bloomberg, which decided to use the Courthouse as the headquarters for the new New York City Department of Education, causing MCNY's then-director Robert R. McDonald to tender his resignation. McDonald was replaced in 2002 by Susan Henshaw Jones, who was at the time the president of the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. There was also an attempt to merge the museum with the New-York Historical Society, which did not come to fruition, and the museum was passed over for space at Ground Zero. The Museum's former director, Susan Henshaw Jones, recommitted MCNY to its
Newseum Capitol. Journalist Alan Rusbridger of "The Guardian" wrote that visitors would have "a great family day out"; considered some of the exhibits, such as a red dress worn by Helen Thomas, as "faintly ridiculous" while praising others such as a large chunk of the actual Berlin Wall. Although writing that the Newseum displayed "self-glorification, pomposity and vanity" in an "overwhelmingly American-centric" way, he described the building design as "uplifting" and generally commended the features. Michael Landauer of the "Dallas Morning News" praised its interactive exhibits, writing: "While the free Smithsonian museums do a fine job of housing our important artifacts,