Artistic journeys from Romania to Australia and beyond

Titanic: The Human Story

Through his numerous series dedicated to cities around the world, Florian Doru Crihană takes those who know and admire his work on unusual, surrealist “tours” of cities we may already know or even inhabit, yet which appear entirely renewed through his gaze. But did you know that some works by the Galați-based artist are far from static, instead undertaking journeys of their own around the world?

Three paintings from the series dedicated to London and New York have, in fact, traveled from the banks of the Danube all the way to Australia and North America, helping to tell the story of the most infamous shipwreck of the 20th century — and perhaps of all time — that of the Titanic. Since 2024, Crihană’s works have been part of the itinerant exhibition Titanic: The Human Story, curated by Titanic historian and collector Claes-Göran Wetterholm, which has “docked” for six months at a time in Brisbane, Sydney, Perth, Quebec and Austin, Texas.

Boasting over 300 original objects and artifacts from the Titanic and aiming to “separate fact and fiction” in the story of the shipwreck, the exhibition promises visitors a time-traveling experience through recreations of the ship’s interior, oral testimonies of survivors, sound effects and multilingual audio guides. Crihană’s paintings, deemed suitable representations of the Edwardian era, feature in the inaugural area of the exhibition, which provides the historical context needed to understand the circumstances surrounding the disaster.

Titanic: The Human Story is one of the blockbuster travelling exhibitions organized by Musealia, a private exhibition-making company specializing in large-scale historical shows centered on major 20th-century events and collective memory. Using original artifacts, immersive scenography, archival photography, audiovisual installations and oral testimonies, Musealia creates cinematic, narrative-driven visitor experiences that combine education, memorial culture and emotional engagement. Alongside the Titanic, recent exhibitions have focused on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Auschwitz concentration camp, revealing a thematic interest in trauma, memory politics and catastrophe.

However, it is worth noting that Musealia operates in a conceptual space where remembrance, pedagogy, tourism, entertainment design and cultural commerce converge and overlap, giving rise to the risk of turning catastrophe into consumable spectacle. Do immersive environments and exhibition experiences deepen empathy or aestheticize and commodify the painful events of the past?

Teodora Trofimov