The Unnerving Kitsch of New York City’s New K.G.B. Spy Museum

Imagine walking down Fourteenth Street in New York and seeing a sculpture of the head of a twentieth-century tyrant.

• Masha Gessen
• The New Yorker

The likeness of a man responsible for the deaths of millions, the imprisonment and torture of tens of millions, and the total subjugation of hundreds of millions has been placed on the sidewalk to entice you to visit a museum.

If that appeals to you, then, for twenty-five dollars (twenty dollars for children, students, and seniors), you can enter New York’s new K.G.B. Spy Museum, which opened last week.

The museum claims to be “the only public museum in the…

• The Unnerving Kitsch of…