Crisis and Commerce: World’s Fairs of the 1930s

September 18, 2013–January 9, 2014
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum @ 10975 SW 17th Street

The 1930s were a “golden age” of world’s fairs, when international expositions forecast an exciting world of tomorrow filled with futuristic buildings and new technologies. Products on display promised to solve questions of hunger and hygiene, shrink distances between people, and increase leisure time. The fairs, however, took place against a background of turmoil arising from the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism and Nazism during that decade.

Using The Wolfsonian’s vast collection of objects from world’s fairs, this installation presented at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, explored the contradictions between these visions of innovation and plenty and the omnipresent signs of mounting political and economic crisis—problems which the expositions of the period proved unable to conceal.

Crisis and Commerce: World’s Fairs of the 1930s was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.