Since the release of the 1997 blockbuster film “Titanic,” the commercial exploitation of the sunken ocean liner has been seen in everything from Broadway plays to television specials. The latest contribution to this trend is a double dose of Titanic history that can currently be seen at The Cincinnati Museum Center.Unlike other fictional endeavors made by Titanic enthusiasts, you won’t find Kate Winslet or Leonardo DiCaprio references in this very realistic attempt to educate visitors in the actual historical context of the disaster.Titanic: The Artifact Exhibit is being heralded as the largest collection of Titanic artifacts ever displayed, featuring more than 200 items retrieved form the ship’s crash site in the icy north Atlantic Ocean. Upon entering the exhibit, visitors are given a card with the name of an actual passenger on the ship and their subsequent first-, second- or third-class ranking. At the end of the exhibit, a roster of each classes’ passengers is organized by survivors and those lost, allowing you to discover their fate. Visitors are then led through a maze of rooms adorned with glass boxes housing artifacts such as remarkably preserved jewelry, dishes and other personal items left behind by the victims prior to the ship’s demise. This portion of the exhibit becomes slightly monotonous despite its interesting premise, especially if the room is crowded. The lines in the exhibit can get a little long, with clusters of guests surrounding the artifact boxes, making it difficult to really see and almost impossible to read the accompanying plaques explaining the history of the items. To break up the box-to-box rotation of people, you can visit rooms designed as replicas of sleeping quarters aboard the ship, with an obvious difference between first-class and third-class cabins. In addition, visitors can wander through an impressive scaled version of the ship’s main stairwell. Following the room replicas, more personal memoirs are unveiled with blue lights bathing the walls in an eerie ocean-like haze. Letters from Titanic passengers that made it to shore prior to the tragedy are showcased as documented quotes from surviving passengers and historians. A huge block of ice is used to convey the frigid water temperature victims endured while stranded in the ocean. Visitors are challenged to keep just their hands on the ice for as long as possible. (My attempt at this lasted about 30 seconds.)This part of the exhibit proved to be the most interesting, displaying the emotional side of the disaster. You could spend almost an hour in each of the rooms just reading the quotes and memoirs from the passengers. The last room of the exhibit holds the most impressive artifacts, such as an actual portion of the ship’s hull. If visitors want more, a souvenir shop is located directly following the exit of the exhibit, selling everything from books, coal from the actual ship and replicas of both jewelry and dishes that were on display.The next leg of the journey was Titanica: The Omnimax Experience, the latest in a long line of films that have previously graced the Omnimax’s screen for limited engagements. This film takes the viewer to the site of the actual sinking, where recovery crews are preparing to travel to the bottom of the ocean to explore the depths of the debris that once was the grandest ship of all time. The film is documentary in style, with an emphasis on both the specifics of the actual recovery operation and what they encounter on the ocean floor. Despite the dangerous nature of the voyage and the occasional shot of an amazingly well-preserved item, the film falls a short in holding the viewer’s interest for an hour. If you can only see one of the two, definitely opt for the exhibit over the film. The exhibit itself warrants a day trip to Cincinnati. It is both refreshing in its true historical nature and interesting enough to leave lasting impressions on both children and adults.Both Titanic: The Artifact Exhibit and Titanica: The Omnimax Experience will be open at The Cincinnati Museum Center until March 9, 2001. Tickets can be purchased at Ticketmaster locations and at the Museum Center’s box office.