Steam and Splendor Exhibit
Treasures from Ocean Liner & Cruise Ship Ephemera
The new exhibit transports visitors to a time when ocean travel was sedate, luxurious, and exclusive. This exhibit draws upon some of the Museum’s hidden treasures, never shown to the public. Its collection of ocean liner and cruise ship ephemera, numbering thousands of individual items, is one of the largest in California. Coupled with vintage brochures, passenger lists, menus, cabin plans, and images of dining rooms and recreational areas, the curators have gathered rare ocean liner-related artifacts from both the Maritime Museum of San Diego collection as well as those generously loaned by local private collectors. Displays cover more than 100 years of ocean-going recreational and destination travel, during the great age of steam, and invite visitors to journey back in time to the era of the great ocean liners of the 20th century.
Among the great collection presented in Steam and Splendor, the Titanic, SS Normandie, the SS United States, the Empress of Britain and many others. Through ephemera and artifact, the exhibit vividly portrays changing attitudes towards maritime recreational travel. To entice travelers aboard their floating palaces, shipping companies lured their patrons through lavishly illustrated brochures promising leisurely voyages in opulent surroundings, to exotic and far away destinations.
Visitors to the new exhibit will learn how passengers chose these destinations, purchased tickets, what they packed for their voyage, what they ate, where they slept and dined, and how they passed their time on board. Educative, thought provoking and nostalgic, Steam and Splendor offers a glimpse into a way of travel now largely eclipsed, but that was once aspired to by many.
Neighborhood: Downtown
Maritime Museum of San Diego
1492 N Harbor Drive
San Diego, CA 92101
Date & Time
Jul 7, 2023 - ongoing
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Recurs every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Price
$10-$20.
