Fundraising campaign for Titanic artefacts launched
Howard Lake | 23 July 2018 | News
A £14 million fundraising campaign has been launched to secure the Titanic Artefacts Collection for public exhibition.
Titanic Belfast, the Titanic Foundation, National Museums Northern Ireland and the National Maritime Museum have teamed up for the the multi-million pound Titanic Artefacts Collection campaign.
The 5,500 artefacts were recovered from the seabed over the course of seven deep sea expeditions between 1987 and 2004.
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Dr Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who discovered the RMS Titanic wreck in 1985, and James Cameron, director of the Oscar-winning 1997 movie and a deep-see diver, have offered their backing for the plan. Mr Cameron, who has added his support to the bid through his Avatar Alliance Foundation, said he feels a “deep responsibility” to Titanic.
Speaking at the campaign’s launch in Belfast, National Geographic Society chief executive Michael L Ulica also announced his organisation’s support for the campaign with a pledge of $500,000 towards the fund.
Conal Harvey, deputy chairman of Titanic Belfast, explained the focus of the campaign. He said:
“The essence of our proposal is that we want to secure [the artifacts] in public ownership in perpetuity, we want to make them available to the people of the world, and we want to honour the memories of the people who lost their lives in that unfortunate tragedy. We don’t want the artifacts to be otherwise exploited by people in a way that we think is inappropriate.”
There are other bidders for the collection, including US private equity firms and a group of shareholders of the company that owned the items before it went backrupt.
The Avatar Alliance Foundation is a nonprofit organisation founded by James Cameron and his wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, which often focuses on sustainability, ocean conservation, and indigenous rights.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.