Its historic ships still aren’t in any shape to hit the high seas.

And the museum remains easy to miss, wedged in among restaurants and retail stores.

But when the South Street Seaport Museum reopens on Thursday, after nearly a year of being closed, its new leaders will have tried to address some of the problems that had left it in peril.

Visitors will find two floors of expanded gallery space, cleaned, updated and re-envisioned by a new team of experts. Perhaps more important, the museum has an interim plan to pay bills as it works to attract more visitors.

“We wanted to try to become an overnight cultural destination,” said Susan Henshaw Jones, the president and director of the Museum of the City of New York, which assumed control of the Seaport Museum last fall. “We hope the public’s reaction is as intense as our efforts to get the place reopened.”