From New York magazine:
A former Google diversity head decided he wanted to build a museum dedicated to women’s history in London’s East End, so he submitted a proposal outlining his goals last October. But after the proposal was approved and construction on the museum began, Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe promptly switched tactics, and instead decided to build a museum dedicated to the notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper, who exclusively targeted female sex workers. His excuse? Jack the Ripper is less boring than exploring women’s history and accomplishments.
I’ll grant that Jack the Ripper is “less boring” than the social history of women in England, but holy cow. This is like setting out to do a documentary on the decline of the American auto industry and making Transformers 5 instead.
Opening a museum entails more than hanging a sign out front with the word “museum” on it. Not every building with immersive galleries, mannequins, a few artifacts, and a gift shop is actually in the historical interpretation business. There are museums, and then there are what we might more properly call “historical tourist attractions.” Such attractions are common at gunfighter-related sites in the American West, and they’re all over the place at Pigeon Forge here in East Tennessee.
The Jack the Ripper Museum opens on Tuesday, and then Londoners will be able to see if the exhibits really do interpret the Whitechapel murders in their historical context, or whether this is another of those museums in name only.
Past in the Present 