Universal Expositions Research Articles

The Slow Death of the Diorama: Tribal and Ethnographic Museums in India since Independence

During colonial times, dioramas were commonly used to portray the diverse peoples of India. They depicted essentialised human types through plaster models in rural settings, engaged in typical activities, and dated back to the exhibition of human beings in universal expositions held in Calcutta, Delhi and London. Since Independence, there have been determined efforts to move away from colonial stereotypes and to decolonise government-funded museums in India. Meanwhile, Adivasi artists are finding their own way out of the curatorial confines of the museum. This paper describes how Indian museology still struggles to exorcise the ghosts of the Victorian museum and India’s own internal colonialism.

Crafting a nation, fishing for power: The Universal Exposition of 1906 and fisheries governance in Late Qing China

AbstractThe 1906 Universal Exposition hosted in Milan was a defining moment for the late Qing in terms of its fisheries development. The exhibition not only allowed China to portray its strategic focus on its fisheries but also its determination to be seen as a modernized and progressive sea power in Asia. China’s involvement in this world’s fair also paralleled the process of political and economic consolidation of some of the country’s intellectuals at the turn of the nineteenth century. These intellectuals’ accumulated experience, common goals, and international consciousness made it possible to assemble a group of professional experts I refer to as the ‘new fisheries elites’, who were able to construct the image of China as a modern fisheries power, if not a sea power, at various levels. The first part of this article will situate this exposition within the final two decades of the Qing Empire in the context of the political, social, and cultural transformation that was taking place around the world at the time. China’s presence at the world’s fair during this period displayed the adjustments of a changing and dynamic national image in terms of both its national circumstances and its international situation. The second part will then move on to discuss in what ways the Milan exposition was conceived by elites such as Zhang Jian, Luo Cheng, and Guo Fengming as a paradigmatic setting in which to showcase China’s drive toward modernity and becoming a sea power. Although China had participated in several other universal expositions, the Qing court had clearer and more pragmatic objectives in its participation in Milan in 1906. This was to demonstrate its recent progress and to change the common impression of China as an insecure, inexperienced, and incompetent country in terms of its fisheries governance and maritime vision. To produce this image, Zhang Jian and his team undertook a sensible and impressive approach towards presenting to the world China’s maritime awareness and the long historical continuity between this country and the sea. This was a conscious effort to produce an ideal of what a modern, progressive maritime China should look like.

Modern ornament in fin de siècle Paris: Antonin Raguenet’s Matériaux et documents d’architecture et de sculpture

This article examines the work of Antonin Raguenet (1839–1920), who directed from his studio in Paris between 1872 and 1914 a vast project of architectural taxonomy, the Matériaux et documents d’architecture et de sculpture. Though unique in its vast geographic scope and empiricist approach, Raguenet’s project remains relatively obscure in the current scholarship of art and architectural history. Published monthly in eight-page pamphlets totaling over five hundred serialised issues, the Matériaux et documents ultimately contained over fourteen thousand illustrations of ornaments collected from buildings, plazas, monuments, and cemeteries across the European continent.Raguenet’s ornamental gaze moves seamlessly from Haussmann-era apartment buildings, to universal expositions in Paris and abroad, to the façades of Lavirotte, Schoellkopf, and Guimard, reflecting the production and reproduction of ornament literature during the period of the Belle Époque. The collecting and cataloguing of architecture elements into categories – windows, cartouche, doors, capitals, balconies, etc. – is aided by the maturation of print media, the passenger railroad industry, and the rise of photographic reproduction in the late nineteenth century. This reading of the Matériaux et documents will introduce its context, contents, and methodology, as well as the role of ornament in imagining and observing the emergence of a new ‘modern style’ at the end of the nineteenth century.

The princess at the conference: Science, pacifism, and Habsburg society.

Historians are showing increasing interest in scientific internationalism, the notion that science transcends national differences and hence advances peace and cooperation. This notion became particularly popular in the decades around 1900, the heyday of the universal expositions and the so-called first era of globalization. In this article I argue that in order to properly historicize scientific internationalism, it is imperative to understand how actors imagined science to have pacifist effects, and to relate their technoscientific to their geopolitical imaginaries. To illustrate this, I analyze the 1911 novel Der Menschheit Hochgedanken (translated as When Thoughts Will Soar) by the famous Austrian pacifist Baroness Bertha von Suttner. It tells the story of a scientific conference whose participants, by the sheer brilliance of their thought, ward off war and preserve world peace. Relating the novel to von Suttner’s own life experiences, I situate her internationalism in the social texture and international relations of the late Habsburg Empire. It appears that Von Suttner mobilized notions of the pacific effects of science with an eye to preserving both the European system of states and the position of the aristocracy.

Framing the Market at the Paris Universal Expositions

ABSTRACT From 1855 to 1900, the Paris expositions gradually included an increasing number of commercial spots and venues operated by private companies and entrepreneurs. This article examines the emergence and development of these private concessions such as cafés, kiosks, shops and restaurants on the exhibitions grounds, and how they accompanied the rise of entertainment and mass culture in fin-de-siècle Paris. More specifically, it will address the organizational aspects and the logistics of these new sites of consumer culture in order to show how consumer capitalism was not just exhibited but also materially performed at the Paris universal expositions.

Fashion, Modernity, and Materiality in France: From Rousseau to Art Deco ed. by Heidi Brevik-Zender

Reviewed by: Fashion, Modernity, and Materiality in France: From Rousseau to Art Deco ed. by Heidi Brevik-Zender Kathryn A. Haklin (bio) Heidi Brevik-Zender, editor. Fashion, Modernity, and Materiality in France: From Rousseau to Art Deco. State University of New York P, 2018. 236 pages. ISBN: 978-1-4384-7235-5. By virtue of the stylish triad “Fashion, Modernity, and Materiality,” Heidi Brevik-Zender’s recent edited volume solidifies the intellectual import of fashion within French Studies. Featuring chapters penned by nine prominent voices in the field, Fashion, Modernity, and Materiality in France: From Rousseau to Art Deco investigates the entwined threads of couture and culture in a range of sources—including narrative fiction, the visual and decorative arts, poetry, popular theater, magazines and newspapers, advertisements, and guides to the Universal Expositions. Summoning an eclectic cohort of experts, the publication constitutes not only a major contribution to a rapidly expanding body of criticism on fashion, but also to French Studies more generally. Arranged chronologically, the ensemble of essays addresses fashion’s connection to modernity, defined as “the era beginning with the philosophical interventions of the Enlightenment and lasting through the postwar 1920s” (2). This temporal designation provides a broad scope for the study of dress, yielding an expansive view of modernity wherein a collection of snapshots focus attention on several sub-periods, rather than on a single moment or artistic movement. As editor, Brevik-Zender convenes an impressive group of scholars who tackle questions related to social class and mobility, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, as well as fashion’s relationship to the nation, memory, and technological progress. Though some contributors (Hiner, Brevik-Zender, Potvin) have been at the forefront of the burgeoning subfield of French fashion studies for the past decade, others (Saint-Amand, Green, White) have not typically published under such a label. Bridging disciplinary gaps between literary studies, art history, and cultural criticism, the anthology foregrounds fashion’s interdisciplinary function by uniting a variety of methodological approaches under the same cover. [End Page 986] However, interdisciplinarity is not merely the result of assembling the diverse contributors; rather, it is implicit in the very materiality of fashion itself, as the volume makes clear. Whereas fashion has remained indissociable from modernity since at least the time of Balzac, the third titular component of materiality brings nuance to these intersecting issues. Defined as the way in which “objects of dress are ‘things,’ as Bill Brown might term them” (2), the materiality—or the object-ness of fashion—positions objects from the physical world as the mediators through which the relationship between fashion and modernity is negotiated by individual subjects. Viewed as such, fashion’s materiality pertains to the tangible forms and physical presences emanating from the attire, whose relationship to the modern subject is explored in each essay. Appropriately, the beautifully illustrated publication by the SUNY Press bolsters the distinctive material detail of the objects studied. The opening chapters frame the fashionable and their accoutrements as social phenomena whose eighteenth-century prototypes modulate in dynamic ways in their nineteenth-century counterparts. The initial essay by Pierre Saint-Amand (and translated by Jennifer Curtiss Gage) studies representations of the petit-maître—“the paragon of fashion in the eighteenth century” (11)—in texts ranging from La Nouvelle Héloïse to the Encyclopédie. Foregrounding the unstable and changing identities of this ostentatious figure across time and in different sociological contexts, Saint-Amand delivers on the stated objective to “restore [the] precedence of makeup and artifice in the male” (17). Shifting to the nineteenth century, Susan Hiner sheds light on representations of marottes, or hat-maker’s dummies, in print culture and vaudeville plays. Rightfully evoking the eighteenth-century poupées de mode as significant predecessors, Hiner marries visual readings with theoretical concepts from Marx and Freud to illuminate how labor and femininity intersect in the marrotte’s uncanny presence. Next, Anne Green explores the symbolism of gloves in the nineteenth century by establishing a historical foundation rooted in eighteenth-century works. Green charts the evolution of gloves from the Encyclopédie to the Physiologie du gant (1841), pivoting away from the accessory’s utilitarian use to highlight its...

The effects of mega-events on perceived corruption

In recent decades, the media have covered many cases of corruption related to the celebration of mega-events around the globe. In most of these cases, politicians and other high officials are involved. This paper analyses the effect of hosting mega-events on the level of perceived corruption in 34 OECD countries, during 1996–2017. Summer and Winter Olympic Games, FIFA World Cups, and Universal Expositions are considered. Results show that, when we take the year of the celebration of the event as the turning point, there is no robust evidence in favour of a positive impact on perceived corruption. However, when we take the election date of the host country as the threshold, the magnitude of the effect is lasting, reaching its maximum value 1–2 years before the celebration itself, and increasing the perceived level of corruption by about 4%.

파리 세계박람회와 보석산업의 혁신(1860년대~1870년대)

파리 세계박람회와 보석산업의 혁신(1860년대~1870년대)

EL PATRIMONIO EDUCATIVO EN LA EXPOSICIÓN UNIVERSAL DE PARÍS DE 1878

INTRODUCCIÓN. Las diversas maneras de mostrar el patrimonio educativo favorecieron que el nacimiento de los museos de educación no fuera un hecho espontáneo. La presencia en los certámenes organizados durante el siglo XIX justifica una parte de su origen, entre los que destacan las Exposiciones Universales. En concreto, la de París en 1878 prestó un importante impulso a la proyección internacional de España. MÉTODO. El método histórico se emplea para estudiar el patrimonio educativo que España aportó a la muestra, analizándolo como parte de la imagen de la educación y la cultura en su dimensión internacional. RESULTADOS. Parten del análisis del tipo de materiales presentados, los galardones, la procedencia geográfica y la parcela educativa a la que corresponde, además de la participación del profesorado en las conferencias y congresos científicos. Las fuentes primarias originales proceden en su mayoría de los centros de documentación franceses, completadas con otras de archivos españoles. Esta información se ha contextualizado a partir del estudio de la prensa periódica española y francesa y la bibliografía sobre el tema. Los resultados nos llevan a valorar el esfuerzo por dar a conocer la situación de la educación española en ese momento, y la consideración de las Exposiciones Universales como una fuente de información relevante para poder seguir indagando sobre el patrimonio educativo material, sus clases y manifestaciones, a la vez que llevan a descubrir el papel desempeñado por maestros y profesores dentro de sus aulas. DISCUSIÓN. El trabajo aporta nuevos datos a las publicaciones existentes sobre el tema, abriendo un interés por el papel activo de profesores en este tipo de certámenes, y dejando iniciada una necesaria visión de conjunto de la aportación que la educación española hizo al conjunto de Exposiciones Universales.

A modernidade nas teias da floresta: o Brasil na exposição Universal da Filadélfia de 1876

O presente artigo realiza uma breve discussão sobre os aspectos que envolvem a concepção de modernidade inserida na participação do Brasil nas Exposições Universais da segunda metade do século XIX, especialmente a partir do exemplo da exposição da Filadélfia, em 1876, problematizando o contraponto geralmente abordado entre desenvolvimento tecnológico e exibição de recursos naturais pela historiografia. Pretende-se mostrar como o Brasil se inseriu nesses grandes eventos internacionais a partir da divulgação das suas riquezas naturais, como parte da construção de uma dada noção de modernidade que atendia aos interesses de vários setores proprietários no país.

Universal Expositions, physics-chemistry and new occupational diseases: the case of Marie Sklodowska Curie and radium girls.

Radium discovery by Marie and Pierre Curies caused previously unknown diseases. Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) suffered from radiations effects, as did girls in the radium dial watches factories. Therapeutic effects of radium were soon discovered, its unhealthy effects were as yet unheard of. Analysis of Marie Sklodowska Curie (Marie) and radium girls occupational exposure, taking scientific debate on radium dangerous effects into account. analysis of occupational exposure and diseases of Marie and radium girls in major documents, including Curie archive letters. Marie had dermatitis, radiodermatitis, tinnitus, one abortion, cataracts, tubercolosis, aplastic anemia. She also was a victim of mobbing. Women employed in the New Jersey radium dial watches factories, often immigrants, died of jaw necrosis, sarcoma of femur, anemia, leukemia and other radium related diseases. Marie was first asked about radium adverse effects by the New Jersey Department of labour (1925), Lise Meitner (1928) and the American Society for Cancer Control (1929). In 1928 Alice Hamilton organized a radium conference in order to find a solution to the radium girls' new disease. In 1929, during her second visit to the United States of America (USA), Marie declared how only prevention could save "radium girls". In 1934 she died of aplastic anemia, just like many radium girls. That year International Labour Office listed the new disease as due to "radium, radioactive substances, X-rays"; it was followed in 1937 by five USA states. Unheard of knowledge, conflict of interest, scientific delay, incompetence and no prevention were yesterday, as they are today, the cause of many preventable women deaths.

Mudéjar and the Alhambresque: Spanish Pavilions at the Universal Expositions and the Invention of a National Style

Spain’s complex relationship with its Islamic architectural heritage was brought into particular focus through the prism of its national pavilions that were built for the Universal Expositions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article explores how Spain chose to represent itself in several key expositions of the 1860s and 1870s, using a combination of styles derived from its Islamic architectural heritage, from the mudéjar to the Alhambresque. Particular attention is paid to the critical reception of the national pavilions within Spain; to the influence of global architectural trends on Spanish architects and critics; to the variety among the different versions of Spain’s Islamic architecture that were promoted in the name of nationalism; and to the role of ephemeral architecture in the attempts to define a national architectural style.

The End of Horse Transportation in Belle-Époque Paris

Around 1900, Paris hosted a vibrant discourse about “the end of the horse.” That year was the largest and last of the famed Universal Expositions, at 50,000,000 guests. It was a cultural turning point, a time for ends and beginnings, retrospectives and futurology. Journalist N.N. Petitjean predicted in 1895 that the exposition would open its gates “in plain social and industrial revolution,” bidding farewell to the “century of steam” and welcoming the new “century of electricity” (Petitjean 7). New motors would drive the industrial world: “one day, maybe soon, all forces of locomotion will be produced by electricity” (Petitjean 19). In 1899, the magazine l’Industrie électrique said that electric vehicles heralded “the coming disappearance of that tractor with turds [tracteur à crottin], the horse.” American historian Henry Adams wrote that the exposition’s electric dynamos left him “lying in the Gallery of Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new” (Adams 382). In 1902, famed futurist H.G. Wells saw a “process of elimination” underway, which would soon remove “all horse traffic” from the roads (Wells 30). Amid the signature historical shifts of the “Second Industrial Revolution”—electrification and motorization—many glimpsed the end of the horse, that essential motor of transport in nineteenth-century cities. The end of the horse age was the dawn of the oil, steel, and electrical ages.

Frédéric Le Play and 19th-century vision machines

An early proponent of the social sciences, Frédéric Le Play, was the occupant of senior positions within the French state in the mid- to late 19th century. He was writing at a time when science was ascending. There was for him no doubt that scientific observation, correctly applied, would allow him unmediated access to the truth. It is significant that Le Play was the organizer of a number of universal expositions because these expositions were used as vehicles to demonstrate the ascendant position of western civilization. The fabrication of linear time is a history of progress requiring a vision of history analogous to the view offered the spectator at a diorama. Le Play employed the design principles and spirit of the diorama in his formulations for the social sciences, and L’Exposition Universelle of 1867 used the technology wherever it could. Both the gaze of the spectators and the objects viewed are part and products of the same particular and unique historical formation. Ideas of perception cannot be separated out from the conditions that make them possible. Vision and its effects are inseparable from the observing subject who is both a product of a particular historical moment and the site of certain practices.

Mapping Paris: Social and Artistic Networks, 1855–1889

Mapping Paris: Social and Artistic Networks, 1855–1889 charts and analyzes 19th-century social networks in order to map the artistic collaborations taking place in Paris between the Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1889. In doing so, it allows scholars to view the data in novel ways and to foster considerations of aesthetic dialogue through crossed paths, acquaintances, friendships, conversations and collaborations in the social condenser of Paris. This article focuses on situating the project on its theoretical foundations, considers some of the research questions that can be investigated through such a methodological tool and contemplates the implications on the discipline of art history.

A transnacionalização de objetos escolares no fim do século XIX

RESUMO Este artigo propõe reflexão sobre a transnacionalização2 de objetos escolares no fim do século XIX, dando especial atenção às carteiras. Nesse período de estruturação da escola moderna, pública e obrigatória em muitos países do Ocidente, observa-se uma circulação internacional de discursos e saberes sobre o corpo infantil, o corpo do cidadão escolarizado, no âmbito da higiene pública e escolar. Ao lado das questões pedagógicas, médicas e higiênicas, a industrialização, as inovações tecnológicas e a globalização propiciam a fabricação e a difusão de um novo objeto que se tornaria cada vez mais imprescindível ao funcionamento das instituições de ensino, a carteira escolar. A partir da análise dos catálogos das indústrias de mobiliário escolar, discorro sobre os modelos de carteira mais hegemônicos, expostos nas exposições universais do século XIX. Destaco as empresas norte-americanas e francesas que disputavam a liderança do mercado de mobiliário escolar, num contexto em que a escola emerge como um importante mercado consumidor. Por meio do relatório do jury da Exposição Pedagógica de 1883, no Rio de Janeiro, é possível perquirir as características técnicas e higiênicas que, no Brasil, estavam sendo apreciadas na fabricação das carteiras. Como resultado, evidencia-se a via de mão dupla da relação entre escola, indústria e Exposições Universais. De um lado, a escola movimenta o mercado. De outro lado, o Estado depende do mercado para produção, em grande quantidade e em curto tempo, de um mobiliário padronizado que corrobore a expansão do ensino.

THE IDEA OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN NATIONAL PERFORMANCES BY PARTICIPANTS OF EXPO 2015

Universal expositions, referred to as Expo, are events organised every five years, during which usually about 150 countries strive to present their distinctive qualities and achievements in an attractive manner – devoting special attention to natural values, culture and science. However, expositions should not only focus on exhibitors’ unique features, but they should also comply with the main topic of an Expo event. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine – based on observation conducted during the exhibition event held in Milan – performances given by countries in the context of referring to the main motto of the Expo. In 2015, the slogan used for the event in question was: “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”, and it directly referred to the idea of sustainable development. The observation made it possible to distinguish four groups of national exhibitions. Pavilions of selected countries were classified under those groups, and if there were displays that clearly referred to the central theme of the Expo, as well as strongly emphasised national distinctive qualities, a detailed description was provided.

Large-scale events and sustainability: the case of the universal exposition Expo Milan 2015

In the last fifteen years, the organization and staging of large-scale events have been progressively included in the sustainability debate. As today, it is widely accepted that such events may have multiple impacts on - and leave an important legacy to - the host cities and regions, as there can be structural, economic, environmental, social, cultural and political impacts. Literature and empirical evidence on the multiple legacies of events have mainly focused on large-scale sport events so far. The debate on the role and contribution of Universal Expositions to long term urban and local development strategies is instead relatively young. This article seeks to contribute to the literature that assesses the impacts of large-scale one-off events, by taking the forthcoming Universal Exposition of Milan in 2015 as an example to further explore the conditions and requirements that may eventually bring true meaning to the term sustainable event. The analysis is mainly based on the Expo Milan 2015 experience in sustainability reporting activities, whose goal is to measure, assess and communicate the social and environmental performance of the organising company, the impacts on the territory of the activities that are being carried out, and the level of engagement and dialogue with the stakeholders involved.

The Pont Neuf: A Paris View by Johan Barthold Jongkind Reconsidered

<i>The Pont Neuf</i>: A Paris View by Johan Barthold Jongkind Reconsidered

REFLECTION OF PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY IN THE DIVERSITY OF NATIONAL PAVILIONS DURING EXPO 2015

This paper aims to classify pavilions prepared for universal expositions. For the purpose of the classification, cohesion between displays and assumptions of national branding, as well as the central idea of Expo was taken into consideration. The first part of the article presents the key areas and determinants of managing a performance project during a world exposition. The second part of the publication contains an assessment and classification of national pavilions, which were based on the observation conducted by the author during Expo 2015. In the context of nation branding indicated: pavilions which fit squarely into a current promotional strategy; pavilions which are not connected with a current concept of promotion, however, which consider existing social, economic or political factors; pavilions which are not in line with a long-term concept of country promotion and do not take into account present social, economic or political factors. Moreover, taking into consideration the level of adjustment of particular countries’ performances to a theme of Expo, pavilions were be categorised as: pavilions which correspond closely with the exhibition theme; pavilions which correspond loosely with the exhibition theme; pavilions which do not correspond at all with the exhibition theme. The exposures of Ethiopia, France, Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkmenistan are given as examples. Special attention was given to the Polish pavilion. Finally, the author focused on whether participation in world exhibitions in the 21st century is legitimate – taking into account the context of costs related to the preparation of pavilions and universal access to the Internet.