Although it dealt with a wide variety of contemporary issues, the indefatigable television series ”Star Trek” was an imaginative exploration of the future that won the enduring affection of at least two generations of fans.
Now, apparently, ”Star Trek” also belongs to the ages. The Smithsonian Institution has judged the program`s cultural impact to be so great as to be worthy of a major museum exhibition.
In fact, this ”Star Trek” show, which opens Friday at the Smithsonian`s National Air and Space Museum, is expected to be the major cultural event of the year in the nation`s capital.
The organizers of the Trekkie exhibition, which runs through Sept. 7, even use the phrase ”major retrospective” in describing it-a term more commonly used for the life work of a painter or sculptor.
” `Star Trek` is an important cultural artifact of the `60s,” said the Air and Space Museum`s Mary Henderson, curator of the show. ”In the guise of science fiction, the series dealt with substantive concerns such as Vietnam, the Cold War and civil rights. It explored many of the cultural conflicts of our society by projecting them into an idealized future.”
The retrospective will project viewers into a surprisingly distant past. Although it lives on in syndicated reruns and movies, ”Star Trek” is an American institution dating from nearly three decades ago.
The pilot for the series was shot in 1964, only to be rejected by NBC the following year as being ”too cerebral.” It was redone with a different Starship Enterprise skipper (William Shatner), though Leonard Nimoy`s Mr. Spock and other characters from the pilot were retained.
It made its debut in the fall of 1966, lasted four years, and won so many adherents that the first ”Star Trek” convention, held in New York in 1972, drew thousands of fans.
An animated form of the series was aired in 1973; an updated syndicated sequel series, ”Star Trek: The Next Generation,” went into production in 1987. Six movie versions were produced, including last year`s ”Star Trek VI- The Undiscovered Country.”
In 1976, the nation`s first space shuttle was named the Enterprise after the National Air and Space Administration received more than 400,000 letters endorsing the name.
The Air and Space Museum exhibition will display a virtual theme park`s worth of artifacts, including 80 original props, costumes and models. Among them will be such weaponry as a Klingon ”disrupter” and a Starfleet
”phaser” pistol. Also on display will be a (plastic) pair of Mr. Spock`s unforgettable pointy ears and seven spacecraft models.
A treasury of photographs of episodes dates from the series` inception
(even Joan Collins was in one of these things); a 25-minute documentary will cover the history and contributions of the program.
The exhibition will also make a serious attempt to explore and explain the series` relevance to the issues of its day and its impact upon them. With perhaps greater difficulty, it will try to explain the show`s phenomenal and continuing following. The Air and Space Museum has been deluged with inquiries about the ”Star Trek” show for weeks.
In recent years, the Smithsonian has made a considerable effort not only to make culture popular but also to make popular culture as important to scholarly study as 15th Century art.
With ”Star Trek,” the Smithsonian has definitely caught hold of a considerable moment in modern American life.
– Vincent Van Gogh never earned a sou for his paintings, but some have recently sold for sums in excess of $50 million. More to the point, a number of living artists sold early works for negligible sums, only to see them resold several times over for enormous amounts of money.
In an attempt to see if there`s a workable and equitable way to redress this grievance, the Library of Congress Copyright Office is holding hearings
(the first is scheduled for March 6 in New York) on a proposal to require buyers to pay the artists a percentage of the purchase price.
California is the only state with a law mandating such royalties. The Copyright Office is to make a report to Congress in June on whether such a requirement should become federal law.
– There is a vast amount of sculpture in this country that has never seen the inside of a museum. It`s outdoor sculpture. Some, such as the Lincoln Memorial and the Daley Civic Center Picasso, are prominently displayed, but others, such as Chicago`s memorial to Stephen A. Douglas, are obscurely placed.
Concerned that such valuable art may fall victim to decay, vandalism and development, the National Museum of American Art and the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property have formed an organization called Save Our Sculpture. Its first task is an inventory of all the outdoor statuary and art within our national borders. More than 25,000 people in all 50 states are working on this task. For information, write the institute at 3299 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20007.
