Futures Past: U.S. World’s Fairs as Maps to Time

Location:

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, North Greene Street, Greensboro, NC, USA

Cost:

$ 120.00 per person

Duration:

1h 30min  –  13h 30min

About this experience

Tuesdays, 2:00 – 3:30 pm 
October 14 – November 18

 

Expositions universelles, world’s fairs, expos have been international events that often set aside the past and focused on the present and its innovations. From their inception, the fairs were the means to create vast essays on host countries’ best present as an optimistic forecast of future possibilities. In the United States over the 19th and 20th centuries, “the future” had been an ever-present preoccupation. What might a newly arrived country among the old nation states be like, and what would it do? 

Inevitably, the “new-improved” take of these grand expositions through displays of carefully selected bits of material culture, all wrapped in a new compound of architecture and design, proved to be highly competitive events for the nations, cities, architects, designers, artists, who produced them. And as intended, they became powerful magnets of destination for the visitors drawn to these spectacles. 

For our course, we will be looking closely at two of these wonderous assemblages: the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the 1939 New York World’s Fair, The World of Tomorrow. They merit our attention due to their particularly notable features, and they also provide avenues for exploring other expositions. Created to be read as cultural and political autobiographies, they still have stories to tell. Come along and see who we were, who we longed to become in 1893 and 1939, and the futures that happened.  

  1. When is Now? (If that’s when you say it is, when is the other stuff?)
  2. The United States: Pasts We Left (perhaps) and Futures We Made (possibly)
  3. Ambiguities in Chicago: World’s Columbian Exposition 1893
  4. World of Tomorrow, New York 1939: The Future in Flushing Meadows 
  5. Art and Design Strategies for Escaping the Past
  6. Are We There Yet? - Stray Bits and Summation 

 

  Refund Policy

To receive a refund, a written request must be received 3 business days before the first class. A $25 processing fee will be deducted from the refund. Cancellation requests received less than 3 business days before the first class but before the second meeting will receive a 50% refund.  ALL written requests should be emailed to emeritus@spartanstrategiesinc.org or mailed to the address below.

Spartan Strategies, Inc.
Attn: Emeritus Society
5900 Summit Avenue, #201
Browns Summit, NC  27214

Your Host

Richard Gantt (MA, UNC Chapel Hill; MFA, UNC Greensboro) retired from the UNC Greensboro School of Art where he taught art history for more than 30 years. His many research interests include architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design of 17th-century France, and 17th and 18th-century architecture, urban planning, and nationalist agendas in early modern London.