Fair America
Fair America

Author: Robert W. Rydell

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Published: 2013-06-04

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1588343421

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Since their inception with New York's Crystal Palace Exhibition in the mid-nineteenth century, world's fairs have introduced Americans to “exotic” pleasures such as belly dancing and the Ferris Wheel; pathbreaking technologies such as telephones and X rays; and futuristic architectural, landscaping, and transportation schemes. Billed by their promoters as “encyclopedias of civilization,” the expositions impressed tens of millions of fairgoers with model environments and utopian visions. Setting more than 30 world’s fairs from 1853 to 1984 in their historical context, the authors show that the expositions reflected and influenced not only the ideals but also the cultural tensions of their times. As mainstays rather than mere ornaments of American life, world’s fairs created national support for such issues as the social reunification of North and South after the Civil War, U.S. imperial expansion at the turn of the 20th-century, consumer optimism during the Great Depression, and the essential unity of humankind in a nuclear age.

The Exhibition and Experience Design Handbook
The Exhibition and Experience Design Handbook

Author: Timothy J. McNeil

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2023-04-04

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1538157993

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Today’s multi-modal, participatory exhibitions and attractions are bound by a desire to convey information, excite the viewer and create social and narrative experiences. Without design at the helm and employed effectively, these experiential moments would not become lasting memories that inform and inspire an increasingly sophisticated audience. This full-color illustrated handbook, based on the author’s research and expertise as an exhibition designer, educator, and critic, is the first title to simultaneously explain how to design exhibitions and attractions successfully; contextualize contemporary exhibition design practice through its historical and theoretical underpinnings; elevate understanding of one of the most rapidly evolving and trans-disciplinary creative disciplines; illuminate exhibition design’s contributions to the expanding global market for civic, cultural, commercial and entertainment experiences; and reframe the exhibition design process using a set of recurring tropes and the methods they employ, making this book distinct from other practice-based, museological or commercially-driven titles. This full-color book with over 250 photographs and drawings uses real-world examples, museum and exhibition design studio profiles, historical and contemporary voices, and draw on the author’s own creative practice and exhibition making experience, as well as contributions from his extensive network of international museum, attraction, and design professionals. The author introduces a new methodology for understanding exhibition and experience design. One that elevates understanding of one of the most rapidly evolving and trans-disciplinary creative disciplines. Twelve easy-to-follow illustrated chapters introduce a set of reoccurring exhibition design conventions or “tropes” that are omnipresent in exhibition making and can be used to chart a new methodology for understanding exhibition design and its process.