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Bringing the Future to Earth in Paris, 1851–1914

Miriam R. Levin

in Urban Modernity: Cultural Innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution

This chapter examines the activities of three generations of men who inaugurated, developed, and extended this modern culture of change in Paris over the latter half of the nineteenth century and the ... More

This chapter examines the activities of three generations of men who inaugurated, developed, and extended this modern culture of change in Paris over the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first fourteen years of the twentieth. These politicians, administrators, industrialists, social scientists architects, and engineers, over the course of two different political systems, created a vision of a scientifically administrated future and sought to implement it through a congeries of commissions, institutions, agencies, and organizations concerned with urban planning, international expositions, and museums.Less

Welcoming the World: San Francisco's Fairs of 1915 and 1939–1940

Leta E. Miller

in Music and Politics in San Francisco: From the 1906 Quake to the Second World War

In the first half of the twentieth century, San Francisco hosted two major world fairs: in 1915 and in 1939–40. A comparison of musical programming for these two enormous undertakings highlights ... More

In the first half of the twentieth century, San Francisco hosted two major world fairs: in 1915 and in 1939–40. A comparison of musical programming for these two enormous undertakings highlights changes in artistic taste and expression prompted, in part, by a new social awareness and an increased attention to diversity. Both fairs marked the end of difficult periods in city's history while nominally celebrating massive engineering feats. The Panama–Pacific International Exposition—February 20 to December 4, 1915—came at the end of the city's recovery from its most devastating local catastrophe, the quake and fires of 1906; yet officially it commemorated the opening of the Panama Canal. The Golden Gate International Exposition, which ran from February 18 to October 29, 1939, was widely viewed as a partial cure for the economic problems of the Depression; yet officially it heralded the completion of the Golden Gate and San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridges.Less

Exposition Infrastructure and Exhibition Display: An Introduction

Julie K. Brown

in Health and Medicine on Display: International Expositions in the United States, 1876-1904

This book explores how international expositions helped promote a public awareness of health and medicine during the period between 1876 to 1904, when the United States was making a transition from ... More

This book explores how international expositions helped promote a public awareness of health and medicine during the period between 1876 to 1904, when the United States was making a transition from the excesses of the Gilded Age to the early reform years of the Progressive Era. It discusses how exhibits at the expositions attempted to connect the public with issues directly related to modern health and medicine in the context of state medicine and public hygiene. These changes played out within four international expositions: the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.Less

Industry and luxury

John Potvin

in Deco Dandy: Designing Masculinity in 1920s Paris

The chapter boasts being the first attempt at analysing the role played by men’s fashion not only at the grand 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes as well as at subsequent ... More

The chapter boasts being the first attempt at analysing the role played by men’s fashion not only at the grand 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes as well as at subsequent French expositions abroad, but also as a luxury object which actively participated in the efforts of a post-war civilising mission. The chapter then explores the ways in which men’s fashion was staged, advertised and discursively constructed at art deco’s most anticipated and celebrated exposition and the new directions it quietly promised in establishing a French sense of post-war rational, industrial luxury in France and abroad. The chapter’s ambition to expand the cultural history of post-war commodity culture is premised on the shifting landscape leading up to and as a result of the 1925 Exposition, as well as what is seen as a pivotal and culminating moment on which all this hangs, the much neglected Exposition de France à Athènes which took place three short years later in 1928 and its follow-up Exposition de France au Caire in 1929.Less

Managing the Magnitude of the Great Depression: Viewers Respond to FSA Photography

Cara A. Finnegan

in Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression

This chapter examines viewer responses to the Farm Security Administration (FSA) exhibit at the First International Photographic Exposition, held at the Grand Central Palace in New York City from ... More

This chapter examines viewer responses to the Farm Security Administration (FSA) exhibit at the First International Photographic Exposition, held at the Grand Central Palace in New York City from April 18 through 24, 1938. The First International Photographic Exposition featured more than 3,000 photographs representing all genres of photography. As the organizing committee wrote in its introduction to the catalog of exhibits and programs, “Photography today is the most catholic of the applied sciences and the livest of the arts. Lucid in its application, universal in its appeal, it is making America a picture-minded people—a people in whom the visual sense grows increasingly more dominant as an educational and emotional influence.” This chapter first describes 1930s photography and Americans' picture-mindedness before discussing viewer comments on the FSA exhibit. It shows that those comments offer insight into how viewers responded to the immediate reading problem posed by the FSA photographs: how to make sense of images of want at a time of economic, political, and social crisis in the United States.Less

Introduction

Nathan Cardon

in A Dream of the Future: Race, Empire, and Modernity at the Atlanta and Nashville World's Fairs

The introduction argues that the Atlanta and Nashville international expositions were spaces through which white and African American southerners exhibited themselves as modern citizens committed to ... More

The introduction argues that the Atlanta and Nashville international expositions were spaces through which white and African American southerners exhibited themselves as modern citizens committed to joining the nation in an imperial future. For the New South ideologues who backed the fairs, the expositions were more than celebratory carnivals advertising the region’s resources; they were didactic events that would modernize the region’s rural population and convince the world of the South’s modernity. The introduction contextualizes the fairs within the New South, provides a history of Atlanta and Nashville as quintessential New South cities, offers a definition of modernity, and poses the question of why mass and speed were alien to turn-of-the-century southerners.Less

Dynamic Triad: City, Exposition, and Museum in Industrial Society

Miriam R. Levin

in Urban Modernity: Cultural Innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution

This chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to examine the ideas and policies embodied in urban planning, international expositions, and museums in five major urban centers: Paris, London, ... More

This chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to examine the ideas and policies embodied in urban planning, international expositions, and museums in five major urban centers: Paris, London, Chicago, Berlin, and Tokyo. These cities were at the heart of this historic shift, negotiating between regional and international networks of production, consumption, and exchange. They underwent similar patterns of industrialization due to the shared international perspective of their planners, while also exhibiting differences arising from their varied political, social, and economic circumstances. The study examines institutions that characterized the culture of modernity being established in these five cities, along with the contexts and personal networks that explain them.Less

Introduction California Welcomes the World

Jessica B. Teisch

in Engineering Nature: Water, Development, and the Global Spread of American Environmental Expertise

This book begins with San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. The state's nineteenth-century dream had rested on anti-industrial and agrarian themes, but the 1915 exposition ... More

This book begins with San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. The state's nineteenth-century dream had rested on anti-industrial and agrarian themes, but the 1915 exposition announced California's future. In the Palace of Transportation, a Ford rolled off an assembly line every ten minutes. The Palace of Machinery displayed life-sized models of California's mechanized canneries, cement mixers, electricity-lit mines, Pelton water wheels, power plants, and diesel engines. The fair also gave one last tribute to the ideals of a century that had been defined, above all, by one of the most self-confident and exuberant ideas of all times: progress. This nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century notion of progress rested on an abstract but universal set of ideas. In theory, progress promised many things: material and commercial development, scientific and social enlightenment, free markets, and rule of law.Less

America’s World’s Fairs, 1893–1915

Pamela H. Simpson

in Corn Palaces and Butter Queens: A History of Crop Art and Dairy Sculpture

This chapter examines the role of cereal architecture, crop art, and butter sculpture at the major international expositions of Chicago in 1893, Buffalo in 1901, Saint Louis in 1904, and San ... More

This chapter examines the role of cereal architecture, crop art, and butter sculpture at the major international expositions of Chicago in 1893, Buffalo in 1901, Saint Louis in 1904, and San Francisco in 1915. It describes the Columbian Exposition’s new style of architecture introduced by the State of Iowa. This new style referred to temples covered with decorative grain cladding that filled the Agricultural Hall and the state pavilions. Kansas built a pavilion decorated with corn and wheat that spelled out how many millions of bushels of each had been harvested the year before. California showed a citrus tower, an orange-covered Liberty Bell, and a full-scale equestrian knight in prunes. Iowa’s building featured emblems of the arts and industries delineated in 130 varieties of grain.Less

Organizing Forces of the Field: Legitimation and Legibility

Jonathan Wyrtzen

in Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity

This chapter examines the symbolic and classificatory forces in play that set constraints and opportunities for both colonial and Moroccan actors in the colonial political field. Focusing on the ... More

This chapter examines the symbolic and classificatory forces in play that set constraints and opportunities for both colonial and Moroccan actors in the colonial political field. Focusing on the Palace of Morocco exhibit at the 1931 International Colonial Exposition outside Paris, which showcased France's treasured North African possessions (Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco), the chapter analyzes the path-dependent effects of the initial French decision to employ oy an indirect mode of rule in Morocco. In particular, it explores the intertwined logics of legitimation and legibility that formed this “protectorate” imaginaire and how these ordering forces were expressed in ethnographic, preservationist, and developmental modes of colonial rule. It shows how logics of legitimization that were contingently determined at an initial critical juncture influenced, directly and indirectly, the logics of legibility that were subsequently employed in the field.Less

A Craze of the Frisco Exposition

Jim Tranquada and John King

in The Ukulele: A History

This chapter focuses on the presence of Hawaiian music at expositions. Because of the ʻukulele's widespread popularity on the West Coast, the Hawaiian presence at the Panama-Pacific International ... More

This chapter focuses on the presence of Hawaiian music at expositions. Because of the ʻukulele's widespread popularity on the West Coast, the Hawaiian presence at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition already was a familiar one to many of the locals. However, Hawaiian music had a profound impact on many other of the fair's more than 18 million visitors, one of which was Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company. Indeed, the ʻukulele had become “the most popular instrument of the day.” By the end of 1915, ʻukuleles—“the new musical instrument, a craze of the Frisco Exposition”—and ʻukulele lessons were being advertised in Kansas City, Detroit, Fort Worth, New Orleans, Duluth, Minnesota, Anaconda, Montana, and Columbus, Georgia.Less

A New South Vision

Nathan Cardon

in A Dream of the Future: Race, Empire, and Modernity at the Atlanta and Nashville World's Fairs

Chapter 1 explores the motives behind the expositions. New South boosters at the fairs presented an argument for an industrial, modern, and imperial South. They exhibited the region as ... More

Chapter 1 explores the motives behind the expositions. New South boosters at the fairs presented an argument for an industrial, modern, and imperial South. They exhibited the region as future-oriented, open to northern investment and industrial development. At the same time, the expositions were not singular spaces. The fairs looked to the future, while celebrating the region’s past. They praised the machine, while remaining ambiguous about its true effects. Architecture suggested the stability and achievements of the past and yet subtly condemned the modern city. Despite these contradictions, the Atlanta and Nashville expositions did present a fairly unified vision. A dream that made few excuses for the southern past, the fairs spread bourgeois values in the present and suggested a future in which a class and racial hierarchy joined to form a peaceful yet powerful New South.Less

When the World Came to Omaha (1897–98)

Scott D. Seligman

in The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo

The Chinese community in Chicago expressed their interest in partaking in Omaha’s Trans-Mississippi International Exposition, a large-scale international exhibition held in America. Wong himself ... More

The Chinese community in Chicago expressed their interest in partaking in Omaha’s Trans-Mississippi International Exposition, a large-scale international exhibition held in America. Wong himself formed a group with a view to compete against another group to construct and run the Chinese village. Given the fact that Wong did not have an opportunity to visit China, the exposition can be used as a good pretext by him to bring his son to the United States. Later, accidentally, Wong was sent to prison for contempt of court. As Wong was physically unable to go to Omaha and encountered financial difficulties, his business partners ousted him from the project.Less

New Women, New South

Nathan Cardon

in A Dream of the Future: Race, Empire, and Modernity at the Atlanta and Nashville World's Fairs

Chapter 3 surveys the role women played at the Atlanta and Nashville fairs. The Cotton States and Tennessee Centennial transformed the gendered nature of public space in the South. Within their ... More

Chapter 3 surveys the role women played at the Atlanta and Nashville fairs. The Cotton States and Tennessee Centennial transformed the gendered nature of public space in the South. Within their controlled and ordered boundaries, southern white women were set free from male chaperones and traditional constraints. At the fairs’ Woman’s Buildings, southern white women embraced the New Woman, while simultaneously celebrating the mythic role played by southern women in the domestic culture of the region. This chapter also explores African American women’s presence at the fairs. Southern black women created a shadow Woman’s Board and invited prominent black female speakers to the expositions. On the other end of the spectrum, black women worked in the fairs’ nurseries and kitchens. The expositions provided an opportunity for black women to speak for themselves, while constraining them in the popular stereotypes of the late nineteenth century.Less

A Dream or Nightmare of the Future?

Nathan Cardon

in A Dream of the Future: Race, Empire, and Modernity at the Atlanta and Nashville World's Fairs

The book concludes with the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition, which both reflected and refracted the hopes and dreams of the Cotton States and Tennessee Centennial. It reflected New South ... More

The book concludes with the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition, which both reflected and refracted the hopes and dreams of the Cotton States and Tennessee Centennial. It reflected New South desires for a society in which industrial capital flooded the South, opened foreign markets, and where a race hierarchy included African Americans in the region’s progress yet separated them within that society. But it also saw the refraction of their dreams in in which the vision of an ordered and prosperous South came unhinged in the fair’s financial disaster. Southern women were all but eliminated from participating, and African Americans’ dreams of inclusion in the region’s progress—albeit on the white South’s terms—now appeared a very dubious assertion. The Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition still represented the New South dream of a modern and imperial future, but for others, it was a nightmare.Less

Images: The Tastemaker

in Knowledge is Pleasure: Florence Ayscough in Shanghai

Ayscough first developed as a connoisseur, under the guidance of collectors she met through the Royal Asiatic Society, including John C. Ferguson. She curated exhibitions of Chinese art in Shanghai, ... More

Ayscough first developed as a connoisseur, under the guidance of collectors she met through the Royal Asiatic Society, including John C. Ferguson. She curated exhibitions of Chinese art in Shanghai, as well as in America, including an exhibit at the Panama Pacific International Exposition. Her writings helped introduce western audiences to Chinese painting, and in particular, Chinese Modernism.Less