Exhibitions

ESPOSIZIONI IN EUROPA TRA OTTO E NOVECENTO:
SPAZI, ORGANIZZAZIONE, RAPPRESENTAZIONI

a cura di Alexander C.T. Geppert e Massimo Baioni

Milano 2004: FrancoAngeli

(= Memoria e Ricerca: Rivista di storia contemporanea 17
(settembre-dicembre
2004))

[English Abstracts below]

INDICE

Alexander C.T. Geppert
Città brevi: storia, storiografia e teoria delle pratiche espositive
europee, 1851-2000, pp. 7-18

Andrea Giuntini
La mobilità in mostra: i trasporti e le comunicazioni nelle esposizioni
della seconda rivoluzione industriale, pp. 19-34

Paolo Brenni
Dal Crystal Palace al Palais de l'Optique: la scienza alle esposizioni
universali, 1851-1900, pp. 35-64

Angela Schwarz
Transfers transatlantici tra le esposizioni universali, 1851-1940, pp.
65-94

DOCUMENTO/IMMAGINE

Luigi Tomassini
Immagini delle esposizioni universali nelle grandi riviste illustrate
europee del XIX secolo, pp. 95-140

Ursula Lehmkuhl
Una mietitrice come catalizzatore: la Great Exhibition del 1851 e la
costruzione sociale della relazione speciale anglo-americana, pp. 141-64

Anna Pellegrino
"Il gran dimenticato": lavoro, tecnologia e progresso nelle relazioni degli
"operai" fiorentini all'Esposizione di Milano del 1906, pp. 165-190

Vanessa Ogle
La colonizzazione del tempo: rappresentazioni delle colonie francesi alle
esposizioni universali di Parigi del 1889 e del 1900, pp. 191-210

Maddalena Carli
Ri/produrre l'Africa romana: i padiglioni italiani all'Exposition coloniale
internationale, Paris 1931, pp. 211-232

Andreas R. Hofmann
Utopie nazionali: grandi esposizioni nell'Europa centro-orientale,
1891-1929, pp. 233-58

SPAZI ONLINE

Tammy Lau
Le promesse e i rischi di Internet nel regno delle esposizioni universali,
pp. 259-65

ABSTRACTS

ALEXANDER C.T. GEPPERT
Brief Cities:
The History, Historiography and Theory of European Exposition Practices,
1851-2000

This article presents an introduction to the history and historiography of
nineteenth and twentieth European expositions. Conceptualising large-scale
exhibitions as transitory, yet recurrent 'meta-media', as a specific means
of communication that encompasses and incorporates other communicative
technologies, it suggests three analytical categories, i.e. transience,
spatiality, and the chronotope. With the help of these categories only will
it be possible, first, to overcome the type of useful, yet not completely
satisfying hermeneutic readings for which exhibitions as dense,
materialized and completely deliberate textures, stretched over time,
inevitably call, and, second, to explain their far-reaching isomorphism,
i.e. 'family resemblance', by means of careful chrono-chorological
contextualisation.

ANDREA GIUNTINI
Mobility on Display:
Transport and Communication at the Exhibitions of the Second Industrial
Revolution

The world of exhibitions, which had particularly lasting effects on Europe
and Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century as well as during
the so-called Belle Époque, presents one of the most suitable areas of
research to analyse the evolution and the character of the first
globalisation, as many scholars nowadays define this period. Means of
transport and communication, whose most astonishing achievements - from the
most powerful locomotives to the longest submarine cables - were displayed
at all major exhibitions, aimed at accurately displaying the world's
enlargement a global perspective. Thus, this analysis of the technological
goods exhibited all over the continent contributes to further refining the
definition of the concept of mobility during the era of the Second
Industrial Revolution.

PAOLO BRENNI
From the Crystal Palace to the Palais de l'Optique:
Science at the Universal Exhibitions, 1851-1900

Universal exhibitions held during the second half of the nineteenth century
represented one of the most characteristic events of Western society, of
its achievements and of its conquests. Science and technology obviously
played a significant role in these exhibitions. Science was often
represented by instruments and didactic displays. However, if scientific
instruments and apparatus could still arouse a certain interest on the part
of the fair-going public between the 1850s and the early 1870s, during the
last decades of the century exhibition visitors frequently expected to be
amused rather than educated. Therefore, science often became the pretext
for realizing large-scale, spectacular attractions, reaching their most
theatrical manifestation in the Palais de l'Optique erected on the occasion
of the 1900 Parisian Exposition universelle. Nevertheless, the role of
exhibitions in popularising and diffusing science was far from being
anecdotic only. These events constituted ideal arenas for organising
important scientific congresses, and also stimulated the foundation of some
of the most significant museums of science and technology.

ANGELA SCHWARZ
Transatlantic Transfers at Universal Exhibitions, 1851-1940

From its very beginnings in 1851, the medium of universal expositions
claimed to assemble the whole world in one place, thus to be truly global.
The more often people from different countries met to see the nations'
economic and cultural prowess, the medium exposition itself acquired a
canon of standardized elements, a kind of exhibition language that people
of different national or cultural origin could easily decode. Where did a
specific element originate? How did it re-appear in a following exhibition?
Why did organizers and exhibitors incorporate a certain element typical of
a previous exposition in their own event? Thus, this article examines the
transfer of such features, as it occurred between the world's fairs in
Europe and in the United States, from the 1851 Great Exhibition through the
world's fair held in New York at the onset of the Second World War. It
delineates the most important characteristics adopted along five main
categories: (1) aims and intentions, (2) forms of organisation, (3)
architecture, (4) technologies, and (5) persons.

LUIGI TOMASSINI
Images of Universal Exhibitions in the European Illustrated Journals of the
Nineteenth Century

The article analyses the ways in which the exhibitions held between 1815
and 1900 were represented in some of the most important European
illustrated journals published in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy.
In addition to aiming at a comparative perspective, and hence at the
dialectics between the national viewpoint and the international dimension,
this contribution examines the specific usage of the iconic message and the
ways in which it became integrated into - or developed parallel to - the
complex texture of the journals themselves.

URSULA LEHMKUHL
A Reaper as a Catalyst:
The Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Social Construction of Anglo-American
Friendship

During the nineteenth century hostile tensions between Great Britain and
the United States were continually eased to a point, that at the end of the
century both sides could speak of the existence of an Anglo-American
"special relationship". Since political transformations of such a
fundamental nature are usually accompanied by concomitant mental and
normative changes, the article addresses the following questions: Which
processes of cultural transfer created the ideational and normative basis
of the "special relationship"? How did they contribute to its social and
cultural consolidation? And what were the media carrying these transfer
processes? Since world's fairs were an important medium of the nineteenth
century and constituted global public spaces, the article argues that they
also played a significant part in the structuring and transformation of
global social and political relations. Through the mechanisms of
visualization world's fairs conveyed new modes of interpreting social
reality. In their function as communicative or even mediating agencies,
they carried the processes of cultural transfer necessary for the social
construction of Anglo-American friendship which preceded the birth of the
so-called "special relationship".

ANNA PELLEGRINO
The "Great Oblivion":
Labour, Technology and Progress in Reports of Florentine Workers on the
Milan Exhibition of 1906

This article deals with the journey of a group of Florentine workers and
craftsmen sent - on behalf of the Municipality of Florence - to the
International Exhibition held in Milan in 1906. The first section of the
essay analyses the public discourses on the event, the formal procedure
necessary to select the workers as well as the contradictions that such a
kind of intervention entailed, with particular regard to planning
strategies of social inclusion and integration. The article's second half
then examines the reports which the workers themselves wrote after their
return. These writings allow to comprehend different positions inside the
working world, in particular those of a group of experienced workers, with
a view to the "magnificence" of progress, and the problematic relationship
between the world of labour and that of technology and industry, especially
at that difficult time when a change from craft to mass production could be
observed.

VANESSA OGLE
The Colonization of Time:
Representations of French Colonies at the Parisian Universal Exhibitions of
1889 and 1900

Exhibiting colonized people at nineteenth century world's fairs was a
commonly practiced habit which both attracted and excited many visitors. At
the two Parisian Expositions universelles of 1889 and 1900, "true"
"natives" were to carry on their regular trade, had to continue their
habitual daily life, were forced to perform dances, and also acted in
theatres and gave concerts in "oriental" style music. In times of political
instability during the Third Republic, the major aim of the French
exhibition organizers was to display a success story of French overseas
expansion. A postcolonial perspective on the representation of French
colonies at the two expositions illustrates the ways in which display
strategies of the administrators produced an unintended and dangerous
vagueness. Due to the multiple ambivalences of colonialism, the important
difference between the colonizer and the colonized proved extremely fragile
and difficult to maintain.

MADDALENA CARLI
Re/producing Roman Africa:
The Italian Pavilions at the Exposition coloniale internationale, Paris
1931

On May 6 1931, the Exposition coloniale internationale opened in Paris.
Among the numerous temporary buildings erected in the Bois de Vincennes for
its six months of duration, three pavilions were to represent Italy: first,
a replica of the basilica of Leptis Magna, originally built by Septimus
Severus, the first Roman emperor of African origins; second, a pavilion
devoted to Italian possessions in the Aegean sea; and a third one simply
entitled Italia, inspired by futurist ideas. These buildings, to which
Mussolinian dictatorship assigned the task of conveying its colonial
vocation to the French public, testify to both the diffusion of the Roman
myth during the nineteen-thirties, and its specific position towards a
ritual dimension inspired by the "cult of the lictor", as well as to a
visual representation of history. From such a perspective, the three
pavilions present fitting examples of what American historians have called
the "inclination to exhibitionism" of Italian Fascism.

ANDREAS R. HOFMANN
Utopias of Nationhood:
Great Exhibitions in East Central Europe, 1891-1929

At the turn of the century, the multinational empires of East Central
Europe - Russia, Prussia, and the Habsburg Monarchy - employed great
exhibitions to represent their unchallenged claims for power. At the same
time, nations willing to free themselves of that rule were sometimes able
to inscribe their programmes of national liberation cryptically into
regional exhibitions. During the interwar period, the now independent
nations presented their achievements at national exhibitions. These were
organized either with respect to the national minorities living within the
frontiers of the new states, or they marginalized these minorities and
conveyed utopian notions of national homogeneity. The article examines four
exhibitions (Prague 1891, Pozna 1911, Brno 1928, and Pozna 1929), thus
exemplifying varying exhibition policies und politics in East Central
Europe.

TAMMY LAU
The Promise and Perils of the Internet in the Realm of Universal
Exhibitions

This is a review of the most noteworthy and useful web sites on
international expositions in Europe from the nineteenth to the
mid-twentieth centuries. It also discusses the powerful and unprecedented
advantages but also inherent weaknesses of the world wide web as a research
tool.

I COLLABORATORI DI QUESTO NUMERO
Alexander C.T. Geppert, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI), Essen
Massimo Baioni, Università di Siena (sede di Arezzo)

Paolo Brenni, CNR, Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica, Istituto e Museo di Storia
della Scienza, Firenze
Maddalena Carli, Università di Teramo
Andrea Giuntini, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Andreas R. Hofmann, Universität Leipzig
Tammy Lau, Special Collections Library, Henry Madden Library, California
State University, Fresno
Ursula Lehmkuhl, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Vanessa Ogle, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Anna Pellegrino, The European University Institute, Firenze
Angela Schwarz, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Standort Duisburg
Luigi Tomassini, Università di Bologna (sede di Ravenna)

270 pagine

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