A version of this article first appeared on mylittlebird.com.
Michelle Dockery plays a rifle-toting widow in Netflix’s new limited series “Godless” and a con artist on Amazon’s “Good Behavior.” So obviously she has moved on from playing Lady Mary in “Downton Abbey.”
Commercial exhibitions such as this one are more like World’s Fair installations than exhibits in proper museums. But I’ve been to the French fry museum (in Bruges, Belgium), a chocolate museum (Barcelona), the pasta museum (Rome) and others, and I find that the wall plaques and artifacts in these displays are more detailed and give more historical and social context than those in many a Smithsonian exhibit.
They are also often more fun: There’s a fun interactive quiz, an “application for employment,” that told the woman ahead of me that she qualified to be a Lady’s Maid, an “upper servant” who traveled with her mistress, did her hair, helped with dresses and accessories. Another visitor got the sober news that she would have to start as a House Maid. Me? I was promised my own domain, as Cook, with my own posse of Kitchen Maids and outside purveyors, housekeeping logs—and the longest work day of any of the downstairs lot. Lucky me!
“Downton Abbey: The Exhibition,” 218 West 57th Street, New York; phone 866-811-4111; open 10am to 8pm, generally, Monday through Sunday (open on Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day); check website for hours, as they vary. Timed tickets are $30 per person, $28 for seniors, $15 for children 4 to 12.