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Float It!
What could float our city's sunken Olympic hopes for 2012? How about the Titanic? The year 2012 will mark the centennial of the world's most famous maritime wreck, and RMS Titanic Inc., which has salvage rights to the ship, thinks that lower Manhattan would be the perfect spot for a Titanic museum.
"For Titanic, it would be a hell of a homecoming," said Arnie Geller, the president of RMS Titanic. "The Titanic started out trying to get to New York harbor in 1912, so if we could ever bring the artifacts through the harbor, it would be an event." Or, as some might say, better late than never.
The museum, proposed for Pier A in Battery Park City, would feature 20,000 square feet of delightful detritus, including a 17-ton hunk of the hull and a fake, yet menacing, iceberg. RMS Titanic, which mounts periodic recovery missions, has already dredged up more than 5,500 items, from socks to cigarette rolling papers full of salty tobacco and unopened vials of perfume.
"There's all kinds of neat things," said Mr. Geller, who is 64 and lives in Atlanta. "If we are ever are able to recover the baggage from first class, we have great textile-conservation people, and we'll eventually wind up with an exhibit of fashion from the Titanic."
Many of the recovered Titanic artifacts have already toured the world, spooking crowds from Seoul, South Korea, to Las Vegas, Nev., where an exhibit cropped up at the Tropicana Resort and Casino earlier this year. And Mr. Geller himself is no stranger to the touring life. Before he hitched his fortunes to a sunken ship, he managed pop stars like Cyndi Lauper. Chaperoning the Titanic, however, poses a different set of challenges. For example, when a passenger's address book went missing in 2000 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the F.B.I. was brought in. The book was discovered at the home of the security guard who had reported its disappearance.
"This poor guy, he didn't understand what Titanic was," Mr. Geller said. "He just saw all these people coming in and thought it would be worth a couple bucks."
At a Titanic exhibit in Cleveland, rumors swirled that the night watchmen had been...