A group of prominent tattoo artists with ties to Long Beach are looking to establish a tattoo museum on the Queen Mary.
The group, Tattoo Heritage Project, presented the idea to the City Council’s Arts, Culture and Tourism Committee Tuesday including plans for exhibits celebrating the past, present and future of tattooing.
The plan is still in its early stages. The next step is to schedule a time for representatives from the city-owned Queen Mary to visit Outer Limits Tattoo on South Chestnut Place near City Hall, said Johnny Vallejo, Long Beach economic development deputy director.
Outer Limits Tattoo already features a mini museum with tattooing artifacts dating back to its establishment in 1927. It is the oldest operating tattoo shop in the Americas as well as the second oldest tattoo shop in the world.
The shop has been owned and operated by Long Beach resident Kari Barba since 2002.
“[Having a tattoo museum on the Queen Mary] would just mean, in my opinion, that we are having a voice for all the tattoo artists who have passed and a voice for all tattoo artists that are coming in the future,” Barba said.
All three City Council committee members expressed support for the proposal.
“I would love to see this happen before the Olympics because I think people all over the world would love to see all the stuff that a museum like this has to offer,” Councilmember Cindy Allen said, referring to the 2028 games, which is expected to hold some events in Long Beach.
Plans in the presentation included pop-up tattoo exhibits around Long Beach and a research program to archive tattoo history within Los Angeles and expand to community programs nationwide.
The nonprofit also wants the museum to contain a family-friendly component with storytelling that teaches collaboration through art along with education about symbolism and how to share stories through images.
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Tattoo Heritage Project got its start in February 2020 when three staff members from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles approached project cofounder Charlie Cartwright when he was closing his tattoo shop End of the Trail in Modesto.
The Natural History Museum hosted an exhibit on tattooing in 2016 and Long Beach’s Museum of Latin American Art hosted an exhibit called “INK: Stories on Skin” from late August 2018 to February 2019.
“[The Queen Mary] is where I would like to see it happen because let’s face it, there is no headquarters for all this stuff that served its purpose and glorified our industry in some way,” Cartwright said.
Cartwright met Barba, also a Tattoo Heritage Project cofounder, at the first tattoo convention aboard the Queen Mary in 1982.
Barba, who was 22 at the time, had a booth at the convention and said she was surprised by how many people were coming up to her to sign a book of her tattoo sketches, known as flash tattoos, that had been published ahead of the convention.
When she looked around the corner, she saw a banner that read “Flash by World Famous Kari Barba.”
“I still say to this day that’s the only reason people know my name is because of that banner,” Barba said.
Prior to the closure of the Long Beach Naval Station and Naval Shipyard in 1997, the Pike was a popular destination for Navy men looking to get tattooed.
Cartwright said he visited the Pike in 1959 and got tattooed at several shops in the area.
“It’s such an iconic spot on the West Coast for tattooing, and a lot of masters came out of there,” he said.