OREGON! The OMSI Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition

August 16, 2026: I got up early and drove through downtown Portland. I really love using Google Maps with the highways/interstate option blocked because I'm sent on backroads and into neighborhoods that I would otherwise never know about. I would probably get lost trying to find my way without this app!

Downtown Portland was wonderful early in the morning before anyone was awake! Gorgeous old buildings and no traffic. I have to say even though highways in Oregon are well maintained and look like park driveways, city streets are consistently horrible! Klamath Falls, Coos Bay, Astoria, Salem, Eugene...all the same. Potholes, cracks, dips, patches. It's bad enough worrying about the road condition in addition to worrying about other vehicles, bad drivers, pedestrians stepping in front of you, negotiating one way streets and roads that veer off in all directions! On the way out in the afternoon when the traffic got crazy, it was life-threatening!

I headed to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) to see the Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition and to try to figure out parking in advance. Online the website said there is street parking if you don't want to pay. Well, street parking is a thirty minute walk in a deserted industrial area. I shouldn't say "deserted" as there were plenty of homeless laying on the streets, sitting smoking under the bridges, or milling about. I didn't feel safe leaving the van parked in this area. Parking at OMSI was $5 for two hours or $8 for all day.

The Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition ticket cost came to $30 including parking. That included some minor discounts. Interesting exhibit and I'm glad I did it. I had the urge to do something touristy since I so rarely treat myself to anything but fattening deserts. I liked the exhibits: artifacts brought up from the ocean, photos, displays, and educational information. It would have been a great exhibition if it wasn't so crowded! And noisy! They offered headsets that read you the display labels, but too many parents decided they needed to read aloud everything to their kids. Good god! It was like stereo speakers with one parent on one side reading one and another parent on the other side reading something totally different. I thought I'd go crazy! I had to plug my ears with my fingers in order to read to myself without the constant reading aloud interruptions. I would have loved the exhibit without PEOPLE!

The new information I gleaned was fascinating. First class tickets cost in modern day equivalent over $100,000!!! Who can afford that? Even the very rich, how can they even justify it? The modern day equivalent of a third-class passenger's ticket cost was about $900! Even that is expensive! I always assumed third-class were incredibly poor, but I guess not! Contrary to my past assumptions, the restaurant menus for each class were displayed and third-class ate very well!

I found the findings of artifacts very interesting. Whole suitcases with paper items (music sheets, postcards, money, etc.) were found still intact. Some luggage with clothes preserved especially if they were in leather bags which held together even after eighty years. One case had perfume samples belonging to a perfume manufacturer who was bringing the samples to the USA to try to sell. In that day and age they manufactured natural perfumes from bergamot, rose, lavender...and the perfume in the bottles still smelled! 

The displays often had one item, but the label said many were found. I think they should have displayed more than one. There was a tin (?) container of toothpaste they believe the White Star Line gave for free to passengers since so many were found. Why only display one? Why not multiple so we can see the front, top and bottoms of the box? Same with dishes. Why display one? I would rather have been amazed at the volume of what was discovered preserved on the ocean floor. Yeah, I know that would be a lot more work transporting and displaying. I wonder if this exhibit is being shown in other locations simultaneously so they spread the artifacts around. 

These au gratin dishes were displayed as they were found - in a row. It seems the wood cabinet in which  they were stored kept them safe during the sinking, but on the ocean floor the sea water disintegrated the cabinet leaving the dishes. I find it fascinating so much of the dishware was not broken.

Upon entry they give you a "boarding pass" with the biography of one of the passengers on the back. At the end, you can scan your boarding pass and the computer tells you if your passenger lived and what became of them. The first boarding pass I chose was a man's name. I traded him in for a "Mrs. Henry William Frauenthal (Clara Heinsheimer).

I've read a lot of Titanic biographies over the years. Some are very dramatic, others very mundane. Very little about most of the passengers. I've always wondered what kind of lasting trauma survivors experienced. No one likes to talk about that. I assumed if I had a "Mrs." she was probably first-class and survived. Both my passenger and her husband survived. I wonder if their mental health was a direct result of their Titanic experience? This doesn't say if Henry Frauenthal, her husband's brother survived (mentioned on the back of the boarding pass) and I didn't look at the final list of victims and survivors for his name.

The exhibit was missing a lot of well-known biographies. I saw the Titanic cemetery in Nova Scotia last summer with a story about a French man who kidnapped his young sons from his divorced wife. No mention of him or his sons. Nothing about the women who stayed with their husbands (Strausses). I thought the most heartbreaking biography highlighted was the Allison family:

I'm sure they were in a panic, stressed and not thinking straight, but why didn't the husband put his wife and daughter in a boat and then continue to look for the baby? So sad. History doesn't know, but assumes, if the parents stayed together because the wife refused to leave her husband. According to online information (I couldn't resist!), Trevor Allison was adopted by Allison relatives. When he was 18 years old he died from food poisoning.

The coolest "artifact" was the ice wall that is the same temperature as the iceberg. When I touched it I jumped and screamed a little unprepared for the freeze. The information also talks about the temperature of the water, how salt water freezes at a lower temperature, and how most people died from exposure rather than drowning.

Other interesting tidbits were the artifact recovery processes. There is still a lot left on the bottom of the ocean, but the shipwreck is disintegrating due to metal-eating bacteria and as it disintegrates it covers up the artifacts on the sand. Although the ticket was expensive, I hope some of the profits go toward more recovery.

It took about one and a half hours to see with me reading nearly everything. 

I followed Google Maps out through downtown Portland in the afternoon when the traffic got crazy. I just drove it slowly and remained hyperattentive. I was tempted to park and take a walk in that awesome shopping district, but remembered parking a small car was difficult. I had no confidence I could find a parking space big enough for Big Blue. I saw Powell Books and kept driving. In the afternoon, opposed to the morning, the homeless are all over the streets, sleeping right on the downtown corners in the old town district with tents and piles of sleeping bags. Right in downtown! It was pretty bad. Police don't seem to control it like they do in other towns. Maybe they've given up?

I was outta there by noon, heading west.