NEW ORLEANS — Before the COVID-19 pandemict, the National WWII Museum in New Orleans was planning to celebrate its 20th anniversary with a crowd of thousands.

Now, the museum is instead selling a limited number of scheduled tickets and holding an annual D-Day morning ceremony and all anniversary commemorations online.

The museum opened June 6, 2000, as the National D-Day Museum and was designated the national World War II museum a few years later. Last year, on the 75th anniversary of the landings in Normandy, France, it logged 3,200 visitors.

President and CEO Stephen Watson said that with the date falling on a Saturday this year, “we could have had as many as 5,000 visitors,”

The museum closed because of the pandemic on March 14. Spokesman Keith Darcey said that when the museum reopened on Memorial Day, attendance was the lowest since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005.