I’ve now seen Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition twice; once in my hometown of Philly at the Franklin Institute and most recently on a Las Vegas vacation inside the Luxor Hotel and Casino complex. Besides the different locales, each viewing was a unique full on sensory experience as the exhibition has different artifacts and overall presentations at each stop on its never-ending exhibit schedule. Just for informational purposes, the Titanic exhibitions have been viewed by more 20 million people worldwide and are among the highest attended in history.
The first time I took in the Titanic Exhibition it was a simple matter of being awestruck by the reality of something I had only saw/read about and romanticized in my own mind. There were lots and lots of other viewers walking about and while that wasn’t a problem, the amount of tourist-types or general elderly in the way did take away from the ability to transport myself into the settings of the exhibition. See, this isn’t just a museum type of display; there are replica rooms and set painstakingly built to give you the feeling and perspective of what it must have been like to genuinely be on the ship itself. So when there are say fifteen people all standing in the same room chatting and things, it takes away from the fantasy by default. I mean, here I wanted to be Chris Reeves in “Somewhere in Time” almost hypnotizing myself to believe I….was…there.
I raided the gift shop just to bring myself a little closer to the vessel and all its fascinating mystery at the end of my walking tour. I’m a complete sucker for things like this; replica third class coffee cups denoting the White Star Line name and logo. Of which I bought two. A third class blanket and first class tea setting (a single cup and saucer) rounded out my very own Titanic replica artifact collection. Eventually I’ll get to putting some of these items into a display in my home, as I’m also the owner of nearly all the original Titanic double-sided posters from the Jim Cameron film release. Oh yeah, I’ve also got a really cool replica of the drawing Jack did of Rose in the film as well as a few other little goodies that are framed together. Indeed, I’d consider myself a minor “Titanic buff.”
Getting to experience the exhibit again after a few years and doing it in Vegas really had me excited. Seeing the large advertisements and grandiose entrance for it most of the week not only kept it in my mind, but only served to build and build up my anticipation of finally doing another walk through.
This time, it was very much like a religious experience for me. I mean that not comically, not for writing emphasis, but in the exact way that it should be interpreted. Besides pal Buzby, I was the only soul walking the exhibit at the time that we had decided to do it. Literally. The entire exhibit, the entire time, the only two people.
The rooms were climate controlled to match the environ that they were set up to resemble with accompanying soundtracks that aided in really transporting one back to the time of the gargantuan ship. What happens on the walking tour is that when you begin, you’re at the beginning of Titanic. There are a few rooms that go in detail about the construction of the ship, showing rivets and other mechanical bits and pieces that I could never adequately describe with the proper nautical terms. But think of the sounds…the hammering of hot steel, the sounds of other ships and their thundering horns blowing. All the while you’re looking at actual images of the ship under construction or a room of twenty (or so) tables containing blueprints and people studiously examining them. You can’t help but feel the excitement of what would be the world’s biggest ocean liner.
After those rooms came a few that gave background on some of the prominent guests that Titanic had on its single, partial voyage. This is where your first chills will come because there are many pieces here on not so notable people who, by some odd happenstance ended up on this ship when they were originally supposed to be elsewhere. You also begin to get a feel for the ship’s class separation via text and artifacts. The one bit that I couldn’t help but keep in my head was how, down below in third class there was one tub for every two hundred people. Now, even though it wasn’t an era of daily bathing, that still sounds borderline criminal!
The come the rooms. Exciting, haunting and creepy in an oh-so-cool kind of way you push through a ship’s style of door and there you are on a third class hallway of the Titanic. There are closed doors on either side of you as you walk the hall listening to the sound of that mammoth engine pushing the ship over the waters. You stop to see a room that has two bunk beds and the most minimal of comforts. It is a room you’d never want to sleep in, especially with the thundering engine never ceasing.
The first class rooms were stunning and insanely ornate with every detail. Gorgeous writing desks and lounge chairs with ottomans. There were lots of textiles and just incredibly showy with everything made by the original manufacturers. A room like this would equate to something like $90,000.00 in today’s market for the voyage.
Next up was the Grand Staircase. It was every bit as stunning as it was in the movie. All that hardwood…they actually even let you walk up some of the stairs in order to pose for a photo that you’ve the option to purchase at the end of the tour. I’d recommend walking up there even if you’ve no intention on buying the photo, if only to stand five steps up and looking all about you at the marble and wood and the clock behind you in the wall, the cherubs…wow. There was music here but it was simpler orchestration than it was in tone with the scene. Hearing a chatty upper-crust along with a song or two the fabled Titanic musicians played would have been much more gratifying than seeing an employee holding a modern camera about to snap your tourist/souvenir photo.
It got freaky when I walked out of another ship’s door and ended up on Titanic’s outer Promenade Deck in the late evening. To my left was the black setting of sea and sparsely starry sky. It was COLD out on the deck and it made me slightly dizzy for a moment. I was almost afraid to look over the side of the deck even though I was only in a room. That crisp air and the ocean sounds over the speaker system made it that convincing.
This was when the thrill and excitement of building and boarding a historic ship’s maiden voyage began to come full circle to knowing the destiny of it and everyone aboard. That chill on the Promenade led directly into a room that had a pretty sizable real ice iceberg sitting inside of it. The rooms I was now walking through were darkly lit, the sound effects ranged from people yelling “Iceberg right ahead” to random panic to the ship’s steel buckling. It is uncanny how staged rooms can work the emotions like they were on me.
At this point is when the exhibition really opens up into its largest room and my eyes lay upon something I never thought or expected to ever see: a genuine piece of the ship itself! Dubbed “The Big Piece,” the giant chunk of hull that was on display weighed something around 15 tons and came in at 26 feet long. This was not something that was present the first time I’d seen the exhibition and I certainly didn’t look online or anything in advance to know it was here. Just standing there alone with it, looking at what the depths of the ocean had done to it…what the iceberg on April 15th did in terms of twisting the steel like a toy…wow. As the centerpiece of the room and rightly so, there were a few videos playing that showed the team bringing it up out of the water. A timeline showed that from its discovery (and like two failed attempts) it took about five years to finally bring the piece up.
Overall there were a lot of smaller artifacts in the exhibit strewn throughout all the rooms, each with accompanying stories all their own. I found it pretty amusing that there were notices given out to employees and to select people on the boat to be wary of certain notorious gamblers/hustlers. There were even some minuscule dice that someone had to likely gamble on one of the decks or some such. Another cool piece had to be the wine bottles dated 1900 and still containing wine in them, their corks only slightly damaged.
The final room was filled with the names of all the deceased, listed on two large boards. One listed all the people who had survived while the other listed all those who went down with the ship. The first thing I did was look for someone with my last name. Why is that? It was almost as though in my head, it would have cemented some connection to me besides my general fandom.
I know they have no choice in these matters but in retrospect, having the gift shop come directly after a room that included the list of deceased is just a little in bad taste. But naturally, like my last time in the Titanic gift shop I bought lots of interesting things. There was the replica ceramic toothpaste container that I spied in the exhibit, a soft cover edition of survivor’s stories, a few postcards, a program of the exhibit. I can never have enough reading or quality replica materials from this moment in history.
Some people will say that this is an exhibit you can bring the whole family to due to the movie and the general knowledge of it all, but I don’t believe one should bring children here. I mean, after I left the whole exhibition and began to reflect and re-imagine what I saw it messed my day up. I mean well over a thousand people died. You read stories of people being moved onto this ship from others by a touch of fate called the coal strike…a lot of the people who died shouldn’t have ever been on Titanic in the first place. I’d like to see it all again, maybe in another city since there are about four of these exhibitions for Titanic here in the States.
Go. Check out a piece of history that is really so much more than the romance/disaster film portrays it to be.