Titanic: The Exhibition
at Fair Park Food & Fiber Pavilion
1233 S. Washington Ave.
Dallas, TX 75210
When: March 4 - April 14
Sundays - Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
About the event
Click here for a related article by Helen Bond.
By DEBORAH VOORHEES
The last cries for help were heard nearly 40 minutes after the Titanic sank, wrote Lawrence Beesley, a second-class passenger and survivor. The water that night was icy; death came to 1,523 men, women and children mostly from hypothermia, not drowning.
With facts like these, "Titanic: The Exhibition" only needs to tell the story to evoke the drama aboard that majestic ship ? four city blocks long (882 feet) and 11 stories high. In 1912, the price tag was $7.5 million. Today it would be closer to $400 million.
The producers of the traveling Titanic artifacts show have four exhibits going at once, all over the world. Already more than 4 million visitors in cities, including Boston, Tokyo, and Greenwich, England, have followed the exhibits depicting the moments before, during and after the ship's sinking.
The display also recounts the discovery of wreckage 2.5 miles deep in the North Atlantic and the retrieval of more than 5,000 artifacts.
Two hundred of these will be on display, including a pocket watch, a pair of eyeglasses still in the case, a deck of playing cards, silver dinnerware, china, a hand mirror, a corked bottle of champagne, an unopened bottle of olives and a third-class passenger's suit of clothes. Personal letters and paper currency had been amazingly preserved in watertight leather suitcases.
Also recovered: a talisman that passenger Maggie "Molly" Brown wore for good luck.
Re-creations of the opulent Verandah Cafe and the grand staircase help viewers imagine they're aboard the ill-fated ship. Side-by-side re-creations of first- and third-class hallways and cabins illustrate that all wasn't luxurious on the Titanic and help visitors understand the disproportionate number of casualties among second- and third-class passengers.
Among the most magnificent artifacts is a rusty, 3-ton portion of the ship's hull (part of a larger 18- to 20-ton section that was recovered in August 1998).
Clocks count down the hours, starting from the moment of impact. Quotations beneath the clocks reflect feelings of the moment. They went from "It'll be a few hours and we'll be on our way, again" to "Turn out, you fellows. You haven't half an hour to live."
Viewers move behind a floor-to-ceiling circular black drape, where a rusted reproduction of the ocean liner sits as it still looks below the ocean's surface. Close by are the names of all the passengers etched in glass.
Published in The Dallas Morning News: 03.03.00 |
