History Center Exhibit is 'Out of This World'

There’s the Gasparilla Parade of Pirates, the Sant Yago Night Parade, and the Mama Guava Stumble -- but downtown Tampa will experience its first out-of-this-world invasion when the Tampa Bay History Center opens Out of This World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television on Saturday, Oct. 1.

Just in time for Halloween, Out of This World will feature more than 30 costumes and related objects from science fiction films and television programs such as, Star Wars, Blade Runner, Terminator, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Batman.

The exhibit kicks off on Oct. 1 with an inter-galactic invasion led by Florida’s 501st Rebel Legion and the Real Tampa Ghostbusters. Costumed characters will begin their march to the History Center along downtown Tampa’s Riverwalk in Cotanchobee-Ft. Brooke Park at 1 p.m. The procession begins at the Marriott Waterside, traveling east to the History Center.

The exhibition will allow visitors to examine how costume design incorporates color, style, scale, materials, historical traditions and cultural cues to help performers and audiences engage, in new or accepted ways, with the characters being portrayed.

“The costumes and characters depicted in Out of This World are part of American culture, part of our shared cultural history,” said Rodney Kite-Powell, Saunders Foundation Curator at the History Center.

On exhibit through January 7, 2012 in the History Center’s Wayne Thomas Gallery, Out of This World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television is organized by the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle and is presented by Bright House Networks, the St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Digital and the Kimmins Foundation.

For more information on the exhibit and related programming, visit our website.