The Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Museum: From Joke to Reality

Congratulations, New Yorkers! Not only are you the envy of every arts-and-culture-starved burg of these United States, but now you’ve got something else to be proud of: A Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan museum opening in Brooklyn! (Surprise!)

Gothamist reports that the quirky exhibition is the brainchild of Viviana Olen and Matt Harkins and focuses on the media machine that Harding and Kerrigan were caught up in. The idea for the museum was a joke, but now that the pair have raised over $1,000 on Kickstarter, they’re going to set up a hallway presentation that will be viewable by appointment. No one yet knows what it will entail (besides giant photos), but I imagine it will be the talk of the boho glitterati for weeks, even months to come.

From the Kickstarter:

Matt and Viviana recently moved into a two bedroom apartment together. They’re really great friends.

The apartment has a really long hallway instead of a living room but it’s a great location and was also the first and only place they looked at.

A couple weeks after moving in they watched that documentary about Tonya Harding on Netflix (it’s really good you should watch it).

They realized their hallway would be the perfect place to house a museum dedicated to the 1994 American incident and the response. They were honestly pretty shocked there wasn’t one already.

That’s all well and good, but let’s look at the most important aspect of the museum: By going, you’ll be able to discover whether you’re a Tonya, a Nancy or an Oksana.

Part of the museum team’s research has been the realization that everyone is either a Tonya or a Nancy (if you’re thinking about it, you’re a Tonya. This of course is made more confusing by the fact that if you immediately thought you were a Nancy, you are most definitely a Tonya. The only real way to be a Nancy is to have very long lines in your body. If you thought you were an Oksana Baiul, well, aren’t you just perfect, WE SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU).

I am a Tonya.

Both Matt and Viviana have excellent credentials for blowing up pictures of Nancy and Tonya and hanging them up in the hallway. Matt works in a museum (in what capacity, we do not know) and Viviana “is a really positive person.”

I just hope that at least a corner of the museum is dedicated to the rise and fall of TonyaHarding.com, the only website on the internet dedicated to erotic fan fiction about what the skater would do to you if she could, hosted by Harding herself!

If you pledge $10,000 you get to spend a weekend in the museum/Matt and Viviana’s apartment and will be allowed to go through all their things and have sex in their bathroom, which is the real prize here. Unrelated: Does someone have $10,000 they could lend me?