CP Photo: Mars Johnson
A pair of men's calf skin opera shoes are showcased at the Carnegie Science Center on Oct. 21, 2023.
At the preview for Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, media sit on benches — wooden, park bench-type seats — similar to those that appeared on the ship’s upper decks. They're not quite the rearrangeable deck chairs of the now-famous idiom, but they're close. This is the kind of sweeping realism, or arguably, morbidity, you can expect from the new Titanic exhibition that “sail[ed] into” the Carnegie Science Center on Oct. 21 running through Mon., April 15 — the anniversary of the fateful sinking.
Following an opportunity to green-screen yourself onto the ship’s bow at the entrance, should you want your own “I’m king of the world!” moment, the exhibition unfolds as a “chronological journey,” according to a press release, through the Titanic’s all-too-brief life above water. After receiving a replica of a real Titanic passenger’s boarding pass, visitors move among full-scale recreations of cabins, bright white hallways, the ship’s boiler room, and 154 “authentic” artifacts salvaged from the deep-sea wreck site.
Standing in front of a display listing names of the 2,228 passengers and crew, Titanic historian James Penca opens the small press conference by anticipating what’s on everyone’s minds.
“What are we doing here still?” he asks.
For Penca, the answer is that “human beings are storytellers at heart.” Titanic, he ventures, is “the greatest story of all time,” America’s own Greek tragedy in which hubris and Edwardian excess doom the ship and its passengers.
But this still undersells the grip Titanic has on the American psyche. By way of example, Penca shares the story of how he first became fixated with the liner: through a 1996 video game called Titanic: Adventure Out of Time. In what might be an apocryphal (though no less revealing) story, in deciding on the setting for their game, its creators went to the Library of Congress to look up the most popularly searched subjects. The three most common searches were: Jesus Christ, the Civil War, and Titanic.
The events leading to a touring artifacts exhibition are even more idiosyncratic. The American obsession with Titanic has come in waves, the first being the moment news broke of its loss in 1912. Titanic is credited in part with popularizing the newsreel after movie mogul Jules Brulatour, co-founder of Universal Pictures, spliced together footage and released it to packed movie theaters only a week after the sinking. A second wave of Titanic fever hit in 1955 with the publication of A Night to Remember, a book including more than 60 survivor accounts (later adapted into a movie). Public fascination could’ve permanently waned after that but for the discovery of the Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic in 1985.
The wreck is where our exhibit’s purveyor, RMS Titanic Incorporated, enters. A for-profit venture created to capitalize on Titanic remains, the company was founded in the late 1980s by a bizarre group of businessmen, including a BMW dealer and former People’s Court producer. After a legal battle — in which a federal judge criticized the deep-sea excavation as grave robbing — RMS Titanic Inc. was granted exclusive salvage rights to the Titanic wreck site in 1994, which it holds to this day. The company (which also put on the controversial Bodies: The Exhibition) can’t profit from Titanic artifacts except when shown as a public collection. Thus, after being viewed by 30 million people worldwide, the artifact exhibit returns to Pittsburgh. (It previously showed at the Center in 2008.)
Adding to the eerie quality of touching all things Titanic, another early investor and longtime employee of RMS Titanic Inc. was the late Paul-Henri Nargeolet. A French Navy man and deep sea explorer, Nargeolet earned the nickname “Mr. Titanic” after undertaking so many dives to the wreck site that he’d spent more time aboard the ship than any Titanic passenger. Nargeolet, along with four others, was killed in the Titan submersible implosion in June. He personally retrieved the majority of the artifacts on display. (Though there’s no memorial in Pittsburgh, Penca says the Parisian exhibit and other locations have projected displays.)
Another story goes that when Nargeolet, who didn’t start out as a Titanic enthusiast, first saw the 16-story ship emerge from darkness on the ocean floor, he was awed into silence. Despite the crass profit-seeking, or the Jack and Rose of it all, the artifacts still retain some residue of that awe — some of them dredged up from 2.5 miles below after 90 years. On display are a still-gleaming chandelier, an inkwell, legible calling cards, a 17-year-old’s shoes, menus, unused dishes sitting perfectly aligned as if still in the box that deteriorated around them, and a vial of perfume that — though you can’t smell it — is apparently still redolent of orange blossoms and lavender after a century underwater.
The infamous iceberg also makes an appearance — “TOUCH THE ICEBERG,” a sign beckons — though it’s flat, unassuming, more like a prop from a school play than the antagonist in history’s most famous shipwreck. When I visited, I tried not to laugh as someone had apparently scratched a smiley face into the iceberg right before its big debut, causing some consternation.
I confess, as a lover of roadside attractions, I previously sought out one of RMS Titanic Inc.’s permanent exhibitions in Orlando, and their iceberg was towering. Ultimately, I’m in no position to judge perusing questionably obtained artifacts. I think it’s safe to say it’s a phenomenon not unique to Titanic — that all our tragedies will return to us as entertainment products. (Pecna notes there are no living Titanic survivors; the last, aboard the ship as a three-month-old baby, died in 2009, aged 97.)
At the end of the exhibit is a banner reading “We are all passengers of the Titanic,” attributed to Irish philosopher Jack Foster, though I could find no context for the ominous quote existing outside the exhibition — maybe just planted to contribute to the mythic quality. I’m sticking with my commemorative mug.
