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17 1 Exhi bi ti on In the Victorian and Edwardian period, public fairs and exhibitions were enormously popular, showcasing ideas and ideals, political movements, different cultures and the advances being made in technology and science. In every major city, there were grand spaces and exhibition halls, and in London large venues such as the Albert Hall, Earl’s Court and the Royal Horticultural Hall and smaller spaces such as the Egyptian Hall, St James Hall and Caxton Hall ‘hosted an eclectic mix of events’, all competing for the attention of the public and each
The great exhibitions which from the 1880s came to be dominated by the imperial theme offer the most striking examples of both conscious and unconscious approaches to imperial propaganda. The secret of their success was that they combined entertainment, education, and trade fair on a spectacular scale. By the end of the century they were enormous funfairs, coupled with, in effect
In his famous analysis of the 1896 Berlin Trade Exhibition, Georg Simmel (1858–1918) identified a contrast between the desensitization of the producer and the sensorial overstimulation of the consumer amidst the spectacle of the world’s fair. 1 The nomenclature of the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris signposted a purposeful attempt to reconcile these tensions between the seductive pleasures of interior decoration and the dehumanizing toil of
This book, a collection of essays, presents new interpretations of one of the most significant exhibitions in the nineteenth century. It exposes how meaning has been produced around the Great Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace. The book contains a series of critical readings of the official and popular historical record of the Exhibition. The 'Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations', as it was initially referred to, was the product of a number of issues. The first is the liberal shift in politics of the 1830s that popularised laissez-faire attitudes to manufacture and enterprise. The second is the need to address Britain's position as an economic power and moral arbiter in post-Napoleonic Europe. The third is the fortunate incidents that occurred in the 1840s to bring together the men who would shape the venture. Mass production, as much as artisanship, was showcased at the Exhibition and much of the rhetoric of the Official Catalogue concerned the way mechanisation could save time, expense and labour. The fear of ethnic and cultural difference was rampant in Exhibition literature. The presence of women at the Exhibition raised gender issues such as being objectified and the threat of being 'seen'. Increased concern for the welfare of the working classes is one dominant motif of political which the organisers of the Great Exhibition could not avoid engaging. The book portrays the determined use of industrial knowledge, definitions of nation and colony, and the control of the Crystal Palace after the Great Exhibition closed.
proportion of foreign revenues derived from cinema rentals, which used to be almost the total, now accounts for approximately a quarter. 5 Since 1985 the major source of foreign revenue has become home video, followed by cinema exhibition and television, in that order. 6 Speaking in 2004 Daniel Battsek, Executive Vice President of Buena Vista International, argued that if ‘the VCR was the saviour of cinema – the DVD is perhaps
24 1 Staging art and Chineseness Chineseness: theoretical, historical, political Chineseness as a theoretical, historical, and political problem in global art and exhibition The California-born Chinese American artist Patty Chang is well known for her bodily-oriented artworks, exemplified by performances on video such as In Love (2001), Eels (2001), and Melons at a Loss (1998). Since the late 2000s, Chang has continued her bodily-oriented exploration through video, adopting the transparent, self-reflexive form for expressing the act of crossing borders