Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds Announced

A new Star Trek exhibit is set to debut in 2020. The Skirball Cultural Center has revealed details of its Los Angeles debut presentation of Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds. The exhibit is organized by the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle, under license by ViacomCBS Consumer Products. It is designed to be an immersive showcase of Star Trek‘s continuing impact on culture, art, and technology. It also explores how Star Trek broke boundaries with its vision of cooperation and inclusion, where humans and aliens work together for the common goal of exploring the galaxy. Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds opens at the Skirball on April 30th and will remain on view through September 6th.

“Star Trek remains one of the most iconic touchstones of twentieth- and twenty-first-century pop culture. More than fifty years since the original TV show premiered to modest ratings, it has succeeded in shifting our ideas about both technology and human relationships,” said Laura Mart, Skirball managing curator for the Skirball presentation, in a press release. “We welcome fans and fans-in-the-making to explore this phenomenon and celebrate how Star Trek has continued to probe themes of justice, equality, heroism, and optimism throughout seven TV series, fourteen films, and thousands of novels, comics, and games.

The exhibition will display an array of rare artifacts, set pieces, and props from the television series, spinoffs, and films, some of which have never been on display in Los Angeles. Highlights include:

• Set pieces from Star Trek: The Original Series, including Captain Kirk’s command chair and the navigation console.
• More than 100 artifacts and props from the various Star Trek TV series and films, including an original series’ tricorder, communicator, and phaser; a Borg cube from the film Star Trek: First Contact; a Klingon disruptor pistol from Star Trek: The Next Generation; and tribbles from Star Trek: The Original Series.
• Spock’s tunic worn by Leonard Nimoy; Lt. Uhura’s dress worn by Nichelle Nichols; Khan garments past and present, including the open-chest tunic worn by Ricardo Montalban and the costume worn by Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2013 reboot; Captain Picard’s uniform worn by Patrick Stewart; plus, a Borg costume, the alien Gorn, and more.
• Original scripts, concept art, storyboards, and production drawings.
• Spaceship filming models of the U.S.S. Enterprise, U.S.S. Excelsior, U.S.S. Phoenix, and Deep Space Nine space station.
• Objects that illustrate how Star Trek has become deeply embedded in popular culture and has even inspired real-world technological innovations, such as a prototype of an actual medical tricorder, Star Trek-themed beer, Boston Red Sox “Star Trek Night” foam finger in the shape of the Vulcan salute, a “Picardigan” sweater, a listening station with songs by Star Trek tribute bands, US postal stamps featuring the U.S.S. Enterprise, and much more.

New details about the exhibition’s interactive elements and related programs will be released in March.