Expanding Nationalisms at World's Fairs by Raizman, David; Robey, Ethan;

Short description:

This book introduces the subject of international exhibitions to art and design historians and a wider audience as a resource for understanding the broad and varied political meanings of design during a period of rapid industrialization, developing nationalism, imperialism, expanding trade, and the emergence of a consumer society.

Long description:

Expanding Nationalisms at World’s Fairs: Identity, Diversity, and Exchange, 1851–1915 introduces the subject of international exhibitions to art and design historians and a wider audience as a resource for understanding the broad and varied political meanings of design during a period of rapid industrialization, developing nationalism, imperialism, expanding trade and the emergence of a consumer society. Its chapters, written by both established and emerging scholars, are global in scope, and demonstrate specific networks of communication and exchange among designers, manufacturers, markets and nations on the modern world stage from the second half of the nineteenth century into the beginning of the twentieth.

Within the overarching theme of nationalism and internationalism as revealed at world’s fairs, the book’s essays will engage a more complex understanding of ideas of competition and community in an age of emergent industrial capitalism, and will investigate the nuances, contradictions and marginalized voices that lie beneath the surface of unity, progress, and global expansion.

"This valuable addition to the body of scholarship on international exhibitions focuses on the role of design in communicating the character of emerging nation states. ... The book is a nuanced and varied collection that delves deeply into the politics of display and the display of politics."

- Journal of Design History

"The ten chapters of Expanding Nationalisms at World’s Fairs: Identity, Diversity, and Exchange, 1851–1915 … explore the 'complex representations of collective identity among interest groups' that were not part of the established powerhouses of … Great Britain, the United States, and France. The book instead focuses on countries that were marginal in the political, geographical, or economic sense, in order to contribute to the discipline of global design history by disrupting the dominant Western viewpoint."

- West 86^th

"Raizman and Robey present an excellent collection of case studies, in which each chapter opens up new avenues for the study of world’s fairs and nationalism. ... These ten essays contribute new and sometimes surprising research to the already extensively studied field of world’s fairs. This volume proves, once again, that this topic seems inexhaustible, and especially ripe for exploring the connections between materiality and politics."

- Design and Culture

Table of Contents:

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Introduction Communities Real and Imagined: World’s Fairs and Political Meanings
David Raizman and Ethan Robey

1. East Meets West: Re-Presenting the Islamic World at the Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs
Debra Hanson

2. From London to Paris (via Cairo): The World Expositions and the Making of a Modern Architect, 1862-1867
Christian A. Hedrick

3. The Belgian Reception of Italy at the 1885 Antwerp World Exhibition: Converging Artistic, Economic, and Political Strategies on Display
Daniela N. Prina

4. A Danish Spectacle: Balancing National Interests at the 1888 Nordic Exhibition of Industry, Agriculture and Art in Copenhagen
Jørn Guldberg

5. A Neoclassical Translation: The Hôôden at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition
Hannah L. Sigur 　

6. Paris, 1900: The Musée Centennal du Mobilier et de la Décoration and the Formulation of a Nineteenth-Century National Design Identity
Anca I. Lasc

7. "Our Country Has Never Been as Popular as It Is Now!": Finland at the 1900 Exposition Universelle　
Bart Pushaw

8. "A Revelation of Grace and Pride": Cultural Memory and International Aspiration in Early Twentieth-Century Hungarian Design
Rebecca Houze

9. When the Local is the Global: Case Studies in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Exposition Projects
Susan R. Fernsebner

10. The 1910 Centenary Exhibition in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay: Manufacturing Fine Art and Cultural Diplomacy in South America
M. Elizabeth Boone

Bibliography

Index