ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Tenement Museum – and issues of ethnic representation, absence and presence – within a larger context of Downtown's post-9/11 landscape of rebirth and revival in which tourism, gentrification and the growth of museums are tied together, not least by governmental funding of cultural sites associated with commemorative national narratives. The Museum's role as an institutional actor in this drama sheds light on the processes redefining Lower Manhattan as the Museum increasingly becomes a surrogate for a past Lower East Side. The gentrified tenements of the Lower East Side, Little Italy and what is now called NoLita offer possibilities more akin to those found in certain historically poor but now chic European city centres. The grunge authenticity of the Tenement Museum and its environs gets produced in ways that make the now 'iconic' Lower East Side attractive even as there is less of it to be found.
