World’s Fairs

As showcases of design, architecture, technology, industry, and politics, world’s fairs have served as overviews of society’s accomplishments as well as barometers of our optimism about the future. They have captured the imagination of the hundreds of millions of people who attend them, and are ongoing objects of fascination, as witnessed by the collectibles, web sites, histories, and memoirs that surround them. World’s Fairs looks back on 150 years of looking forward. Surprisingly, this is the first illustrated history of all major exhibitions, from the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations in London in 1851 to the upcoming fair in Hanover in 2000. In all, 27 fairs are detailed through their histories, structures, and graphics. While many of the products and ideas promoted at past fairs never materialized, many became television, for example, was first shown at the 1939 New York fair. Similarly, while many buildings and landscapes built for fairs have become worldwide icons–the Eiffel Tower, the Crystal Palace, the Barcelona Pavilion, the Seattle Space Needle, the Buckminster Fuller dome in Montreal–hundreds of splendid structures have been forgotten. World’s Fairs uses original plans, design studies, period photo-graphs, and ephemera such as programs and postcards to recreate the visual richness, color, and excitement of world’s fairs. The fairs London, 1851; Paris, 1867; Vienna, 1873 ; Philadelphia, 1876; Paris, 1878 ; Sydney, 1879; Amsterdam, 1883; Antwerp, 1885 ; Paris, 1889 ; Chicago, 1893 ; Paris, 1900; Turin, 1902; Brussels, 1910; San Francisco, 1915; Paris, 1925; Barcelona, 1929; Antwerp, 1930; Brussels, 1935; Paris, 1937; New York, 1939; Brussels, 1958; New York, 1964; Montreal, 1967; Osaka, 1970; Seville, 1992; and Hanover, 2000