IMAGINE EXHIBITIONS Imagine C
all the people
An exhibition can bring people into your property both day and evening from all walks of life, says Tom Zaller, founder and CEO of Imagine Exhibitions. So how does it work?
asino International: Hi Tom, what’s your background?
Tom Zaller: I started out at 14 working for my
brother’s production company in Cleveland, OH, doing lighting, rigging, and whatever for rock and roll shows, theatre, bar mitzvahs, weddings – anything show/entertainment related. There was a local producer in town that had found an aspiring young magician named David Copperfield, who became one of the most famous magicians of all time. Through my work with my brother’s production company and the
exhibition in Orlando, FL, we were invited to work with the company that managed the ownership of the wreck site of the Titanic. Through that relationship, we were able to license all of the artefacts recovered from the Titanic wreck site and develop touring exhibitions that still travel the world today. The company that I was working for was then bought by SFX Entertainment, which was subsequently bought by ClearChannel Entertainment, and we slowly carved out an exhibition division inside the world of entertainment. After about three years of acquisitions and changes in the industry, RMS Titanic approached me with an offer to work on developing and producing their touring Titanic exhibitions. Because those exhibitions were such a massive success, we started looking to expand into doing human anatomy exhibitions, too, and we formed a company called Premier Exhibitions. The company had been called RMS Titanic Inc., and we didn’t want to do the human anatomy exhibitions under that name, because we were afraid people might make an unintentional connection between them. We did two shows, Bodies Revealed, which opened in Blackpool, England, and one called BODIES…The Exhibition. The anatomy exhibitions quickly became very popular and we started touring our shows. My first foray into exhibitions in casinos was in
local producer, I started working with Copperfield and toured with him. I started as a touring rigger, then worked my way up to a touring production manager position, and after seven years with Copperfield, I was invited to work on a new project about the Titanic. After building a permanent Titanic
40 FEBRUARY 2017
2000 with the Titanic at the Rio hotel, where we stayed for about a year. I always liked Las Vegas because people go there to be entertained. They’re looking for something to do both in the evening and the daytime; you can only drink and gamble so much! I met the folks at the Tropicana and brought the
Titanic in first, then BODIES, and we were there on and off for a couple of years. Through that relationship, I met some people from Luxor, and did a long-term deal to put Titanic and BODIES there. I left
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