NEW YORK, Jan 18 — The controversial 1994 story of US Olympic ice skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan gets its own museum in Brooklyn, New York.
Co-curators of THNK1994 Museum Matt Harkins and Viviana Olen saw the ESPN documentary 30 for 30: The Price of Gold by Nanette Bernstein and were so moved by Harding and Kerrigan’s saga that two weeks later in 1995 they created a makeshift museum in their 25-foot hallway.
The museum proved to be so popular they moved into a two-story commercial space in December.
“Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan were both a part of this story that took over the entire country in 1994,” said Harkins.
“Everyone was paying attention for an extended period of time. But when you look back, the headlines that people were reading and what their general attitudes were towards both of the women were kind of, not at all true.
“And I think that, what we got passionate about was that we didn’t feel that either one of them was represented accurately.”
The museum’s opening, filled with memorabilia and artwork depicting Harding and Kerrigan, coincided with the release of film “I, Tonya”, which tells the story behind Harding’s fall from grace in the public eye.
In 1994, it emerged that Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly and bodyguard Shawn Eckhardt tried to break the leg of her main rival Kerrigan ahead of the Winter Olympics that year to give her an advantage.
The incident caused a worldwide media frenzy and saw Harding become a well-known name around the world for all the wrong reasons.—Reuters
