Expositions

In Expositions, Philippe Hamon leads us on an engaging intellectual stroll through the spaces and representations of the nineteenth-century French metropolis. Inspired by the cultural histories of Walter Benjamin and Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Expositions explores the spatial and cultural logic of Haussmann's sweeping Paris boulevards, classic novels by Balzac and Zola, the Bon March� department store, and the poetry of Baudelaire.

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.

The Parker Society was the London-based Anglican society that printed in fifty-four volumes the works of the leading English Reformers of the sixteenth century. It was formed in 1840 and disbanded in 1855 when its work was completed. Named after Matthew Parker -- the first Elizabethan Archbishop of Canterbury, who was known as a great collector of books -- the stimulus for the foundation of the society was provided by the Tractarian movement, led by John Henry Newman and Edward B. Pusey. Some members of this movement spoke disparagingly of the English Reformation, and so some members of the Church of England felt the need to make available in an attractive form the works of the leaders of that Reformation.

Includes arguments for having California represented at the upcoming Paris Universal Exposition of 1878, criticisms of political misrule in California and San Francisco, and information about Pickett's role in the early history of California and the Oregon Territory.

In the depths of the Great Depression, when America's future seemed bleak, nearly one hundred million people visited expositions celebrating the "century of progress." These fairs fired the national imagination and served as cultural icons on which Americans fixed their hopes for prosperity and power. World of Fairs continues Robert W. Rydell's unique cultural history—begun in his acclaimed All the World's a Fair—this time focusing on the interwar exhibitions. He shows how the ideas of a few—particularly artists, architects, and scientists—were broadcast to millions, proclaiming the arrival of modern America—a new empire of abundance build on old foundations of inequality. Rydell revisits several fairs, highlighting the 1926 Philadelphia Sesquicentennial, the 1931 Paris Colonial Exposition, the 1933-34 Chicago Century of Progress Exposition, the 1935-36 San Diego California Pacific Exposition, the 1936 Dallas Texas Centennial Exposition, the 1937 Cleveland Great Lakes and International Exposition, the 1939-40 San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition, the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, and the 1958 Brussels Universal Exposition.