March 29, 2024
Local News

Ray Bradbury Experience Museum to exhibit in San Diego

WAUKEGAN – A highly coveted exhibit space for the 2018 Comic-Con International: San Diego has landed at the doorstep of the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum.

Committee members and volunteers are planning the Bradbury exhibit for the July 18 to 22 mega-convention. Their message: get ready for the future Ray Bradbury Experience Museum, opening in 2020 in Waukegan.

Waukegan’s native son Ray Bradbury was the renowned author of “Fahrenheit 451” and a lifelong comic book fan and comic book writer who attended the first Comic-Con in San Diego in 1970. That event, attended by about 300 people, is now dwarfed by current attendance, which tops 130,000. This Comic-Con has become the pinnacle of worldwide comics conventions.

Over the four days of the San Diego Convention, the RBEM exhibit space will highlight the future museum’s “Martian Chronicles” area exhibit, designed by CEP–Chicago Exhibit Productions Inc., along with floor plans, the author’s connection with Comic-Con, and other displays. Volunteer Orton Ortwein will present two panels on comics and Ray Bradbury. Visitors to the Bradbury exhibit will experience unique photo opportunities and giveaways, such as buttons, bookmarks and CDs with audio of Bradbury’s stories.

The museum is being designed to engage visitors in Bradbury’s imagination through his stories.

Exhibits will feature Bradbury’s themes of space travel, freedom of expression, comics, and more, using all media, including virtual and augmented reality.

“Our vision is that the Bradbury legacy must be celebrated with a museum right in Waukegan, his beloved Green Town,” said Sandra Petroshius, RBEM Chairwoman. “Everyone’s support is needed to make this museum a reality. RBEM welcomes donations from near and far, including fans at Comic-Con and from throughout the world. Call it a “dandelion-roots” effort.”

Visit www.raybradburyexperiencemuseum for information.

Bradbury received Comic-Con’s 2010 Icon Award, honoring him as one of the world’s best-known authors in “a career spanning over 60 years and more than 500 published works –novels, short stories, poems, and nonfiction pieces.”

San Diego Comic-Con’s founders wanted to include not only comic books, but also many different aspects of pop culture, including films and science fiction/fantasy literature.

The Ray Bradbury Museum is a program of the Greater Waukegan Development Coalition, a 501(c)3 nonprofit economic development corporation.