Meet Me at the Fair: A World's Fair Reader

Meet Me at the Fair: A World's Fair Reader PDF

Author: Celia Pearce

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 1312115874

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Together with the Olympics, world's fairs are one of the few regular international events of sufficient scale to showcase a spectrum of sights, wonders, learning opportunities, technological advances, and new (or renewed) urban districts, and to present them all to a mass audience. Meet Me at the Fair: A World's Fair Reader breaks new ground in scholarship on world's fairs by incorporating a number of short new texts that investigate world's fairs in their multiple aspects: political, urban/architectural, anthropological/ sociological, technological, commercial, popular, and representational. Contributors come from eight different countries and represent affiliations in academia, museums and libraries, professional and architectural firms, non-profit organizations, and government regulatory agencies. In taking the measure of both the material artifacts and the larger cultural production of world's fairs, the volume presents its own phantasmagoria of disciplinary perspectives, historical periods, geographical locales, media, and messages, mirroring the microcosmic form of the world's fair itself.

Meet Me in St. Louis

Meet Me in St. Louis PDF

Author: Robert Jackson

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2004-03-01

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 9780060092672

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You are holding a ticket to one of the largest and most magnificent celebrations of all time -- the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair! For seven months nearly twenty million visitors from around the globe flooded the fairgrounds of Forest Park. Many explored the twelve mammoth palaces (made of plaster and horsehair!), which showcased amazing exhibits. Others enjoyed watching the first Olympic Games in the United States, keeping cool all summer with a new treat that became an instant hit -- the ice-cream cone. And everyone loved viewing all 1275 acres of fairgrounds from atop the 265-foot Ferris wheel. Robert Jackson describes the planning, building, events, and memory of a fair that enthralled millions with its magic. In fascinating detail, he captures the energy and imagination of turn-of-the-century America, when fairgoers begged friends and family to meet them in St. Louis.

Architecture of Great Expositions 1937-1959

Architecture of Great Expositions 1937-1959 PDF

Author: Rika Devos

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1317179110

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This book investigates architecture as a form of diplomacy in the context of the Second World War at six major European international and national expositions that took place between 1937 and 1959. The volume gives a fascinating account of architecture assuming the role of the carrier of war-related messages, some of them camouflaged while others quite frank. The famous standoffs between the Stalinist Russia and the Nazi Germany in Paris 1937, or the juxtaposition of the USSR and USA pavilions in Brussels 1958, are examples of very explicit shows of force. The book also discusses some less known - and more subtle - messages, revealed through an examination of several additional pavilions in both Paris and Brussels; of a series of expositions in Moscow; of the Universal Exhibition in Rome that was planned to open in 1942; and of London’s South Bank Exposition of 1951: all of them related, in one way or another, to either an anticipation of the global war or to its horrific aftermaths. A brief discussion of three pre-World War II American expositions that are reviewed in the Epilogue supports this point. It indicates a significant difference in the attitude of American exposition commissioners, who were less attuned to the looming war than their European counterparts. The book provides a novel assessment of modern architecture’s involvement with national representation. Whether in the service of Fascist Italy or of Imperial Japan, of Republican Spain or of the post-war Franquista regime, of the French Popular Front or of socialist Yugoslavia, of the arising FRG or of capitalist USA, of Stalinist Russia or of post-colonial Britain, exposition architecture during the period in question was driven by a deep faith in its ability to represent ideology. The book argues that this widespread confidence in architecture’s ability to act as a propaganda tool was one of the reasons why Modernist architecture lent itself to the service of such different masters.

Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries

Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries PDF

Author: Harriet Atkinson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-12-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1350088501

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After World War II, museum and gallery exhibitions, industrial and trade fairs, biennials, triennials, festivals and world's fairs increasingly came to be used as locations for the exercise of "soft power," for displays of cultural diplomacy between nations and as spaces for addressing areas of social and political contestation. Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries opens with a substantial introduction to the key debates, followed by case studies that advance the field of exhibition histories both geographically and methodologically, focusing on postwar transnational exchange and the wider networks engendered through exhibitions. Chapters trace relations across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific, and the United States of America, drawing on a range of approaches and perspectives, principally from art and design history but also from social, economic and political history, and museum studies. Featured case studies include the presentation of African-American Art at FESMAN '66 and FESTAC '77, the US's 1961 Small Industries Exhibition in Colombo, Israel's early appearances at the Venice Biennale, the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, and Hong Kong's Pavilion at Expo 70 in Tokyo.

Just North of Bliss (Meet Me at the Fair, Book

Just North of Bliss (Meet Me at the Fair, Book PDF

Author: Rachel Wilson

Publisher: ePublishing Works!

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1644571765

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Worlds collide when a brash Yankee meets a steely southern belle in Just North of Bliss, an Americana romance from Rachel Wilson. —1893 Chicago World’s Fair— Belle Monroe has scandalized her family down to its proud Georgia roots by forsaking genteel poverty to work as a nanny in New York City. When her employer travels to Chicago to see the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Belle accompanies them with her two charges where she meets Mr. Winslow Asher, the official photographer for the World’s Fair—a man possessing all the Yankee traits Belle abhors. Brash, ambitious, and in search of the perfect model of American beauty, Win is immediately and understandably captivated with the beautiful Belle and what he believes are her two children. Personalities clash, but Win soon realizes how wrong he was about Belle and how right she is for him. His tender advances soon make the steely-spined Belle wonder if this brash northerner and a proper southern girl like herself could actually be meant for each other. Publisher's Note: Set in a real time and place, this light and humorous romance is light on sensuality and replete with heated banter. "Set against the backdrop of the Chicago World's Fair, this genteel romance sets prissy Rowena Belle Monroe on a collision course with Yankee photographer Win Asher. Forced by financial circumstances to earn her living as a nanny, Belle is compelled to leave Georgia and come to New York. On a trip to the fair with her employers and two charges, Belle is spotted by Win, the fair's photographer. Stunned and inspired by Belle's beauty, Win tries to persuade her to model for a series of photographs, but she's none too eager to fall in line with his plans. To Belle, Win embodies all the traits she abhors in Yankees, but after many encounters set against the carefully painted portrait of the fair, she surrenders to him both emotionally and physically. Duncan (Coming Up Roses) plays on the cultural differences between the North and South, contrasting Belle's impeccable manners and genteel ideals with Win's assertiveness and ambition. Although Belle will annoy readers at first with her old-fashioned ideals she finds photography "morally repugnant" and thinks only loose women wear makeup she slowly and believably evolves into an empathetic heroine. Unlike many of the highly sensual romances that are available today, this comic confection is light on physical fireworks but heavy on heated banter." ~Publisher's Weekly, Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. The Meet Me at the Fair Series Coming Up Roses Just North of Bliss A Bicycle Built for Two

The Rise and Fall of the Future

The Rise and Fall of the Future PDF

Author: Gordon Arnold

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1476641013

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Mid-20th century America envisioned a wondrous future of comfort, convenience and technological advancement. Popular culture--including World's Fairs, science fiction and advertising--fed high hopes even when war and hardship threatened. American ingenuity and consumer culture promised to deliver flying cars, undersea cities, household robots and space travel. By the 1960s political assassinations, the civil rights and women's movements, the Vietnam War and the "generation gap" eroded that optimism, refocusing attention on the issues of the present. The nation's utopian dream was brief but revealing. Based on a wide range of sources, this book takes a fresh look at America's precipitous fall from futurism to disillusionment.

Future Texts

Future Texts PDF

Author: Vicki Callahan

Publisher: Parlor Press LLC

Published: 2015-10-25

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1602357706

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Future Texts: Subversive Performance and Feminist Bodies sketches several possibilities for future texts, those that imagine new pathways through the forms used to express contemporary questions of race, gender, and identity. Future Texts: Subversive Performance and Feminist Bodies’ area of investigation is situated within popular culture, not as a place of critique or celebration, but rather as a contested site that crosses an array of media forms, from music video, to games, to global journalism. While there is an established tradition in feminist writing founded on experimental expression that disrupts patriarchal culture, it has too often failed to consider issues of race and class. This is evident in the dilemma faced by black feminists who, alienated from dominant feminism’s failure to consider their experience, have been forced to choose whether they were black or women first. To push back against such identity splintering, Future Texts: Subversive Performance and Feminist Bodies begins with the politics and aesthetics of Afrofuturism, which sets the stage for the dialogue around contemporary feminism that runs through the collection. With a paradigm of remix as linguistic play and reconfiguration, the chapters confront the question of narrative codes and conventions. These new formats are crucial to rewriting the relationship between hegemonic and resistant texts.

Rise of the Spectacular

Rise of the Spectacular PDF

Author: John Hannigan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08-29

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 1000409023

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In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as ‘the tranquillized decade’, America at mid-century hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of ‘spectacular’ events, spaces, and technologies. Spectacularization was collectively defined by five features. It reflected and legitimated a dramatic increase in scale from the local/regional to the national. It was mediated by the increasingly popular medium of television. It exploited middle-class tension between comfortable conformity and desire for safe adventure. It celebrated technological progress, boosterism and military power. It was orchestrated and marketed by a constellation, sometimes a coalition, of entrepreneurs and dream merchants, most prominently Walt Disney. In this wide-ranging odyssey across mid-century America, Hannigan visits leisure parks (Cypress Gardens), parades (Tournament of Roses), mega-events (Squaw Valley Olympics, Century 21 Exposition), architectural styles (desert modernism), innovations (underwater photography, circular film projection) and everyday wonders (chemistry sets). Collectively, these fashioned the ‘spectacular gaze’, a prism through which Americans in the 1950s were acculturated to and conscripted into a vision of a progressive, technology-based future. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as non-academic readers who are by a fascinating era in history.