World Exhibitions

World exhibitions were popular venues for promoting and shaping consumer culture since at least the middle of the nineteenth century. The Great Exhibition in London's Hyde Park in 1851 is generally recognized as the first world exhibition, although it drew on earlier and less ambitious French examples, if not the longer-term history of the traditional bazaar and potlatch. Later world exhibitions were held in major European, North American, Asian, and Latin American cities. Some of those were national capitals, while others were industrial or manufacturing centers. It was not uncommon for capital cities throughout the British Empire, for example, to also host their own bold world's fairs. Well through the 1960s, such shows entertained and educated millions of men, women, and children.

Organizers and exhibitors were not bashful about celebrating such large-scale events as opportunities to organize, buy, sell, advertise, and make consumer goods of nearly all varieties, including food, machines, clothing, furniture, and art. Visitors were drawn to the exhibitions for many reasons, but among them was the opportunity to observe and consume that vast universe of goods that catered to and shaped taste and beauty. Such goods held many meanings at the exhibitions, including fantasy, status, information, and power as part of consumerism. Major companies organized their own pavilions and courts for those and other reasons as they sought to engage consumers and compete with other companies. Among such buildings were those organized and occupied by General Motors at Chicago's Century of Progress and New York World's Fair in the 1930s.

One could reasonably conclude that the exhibitions made the apparently limitless, if not at times overwhelming, world of material culture and the ideas associated with such “things” comprehensible. Exhibition categories, displays, guidebooks, and catalogs created order out of this spectacle of goods. Many goods were also made immediately accessible, as some events encouraged visitors to purchase and consume goods right on the exhibition grounds themselves; at other times, goods displayed at the exhibitions might be available for purchase at neighboring department stores. Such stores grew up and became popular alongside the great exhibitions during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, influencing one another. Among many connections, department store and exhibition displays often mimicked one another.

Exhibition participants promoted consumer culture in ways that revealed a rather sophisticated understanding of not only the concept of [Page 1535]consumerism but also the various strategies to promote and manage consumption. This was done in a surprisingly self-conscious and direct manner. Some appealed to the dreams and fantasies of advertising, thereby intentionally manufacturing consumerism; others emphasized the demands of existing utility.

While many argued that all things under the sun should be available for consumption at the exhibitions, others argued that the goods should be limited by specific criteria such as whether or not they were of the highest available quality or whether they were made within the exhibition buildings. Those advocating goods of high quality suggested that consumption would develop taste. Matters of authenticity and pricing essential to consumer culture were also matters of debate, as was the question of whether only local, national, and imperial goods should be displayed or whether the event would be turned in a more internationalist direction. Commissioners and exhibitors also debated how to compare and evaluate consumer goods. Formal competitions, evaluation by jurors, and the awarding of prizes were common outcomes of such discussions. In these and other ways, world exhibitions were object lessons in both the power of consumerism and the tensions inherent within it. Most if not nearly all participants agreed that exhibitions could be perceived as markets, or ways to organize and manage, if not outright promote, consumerism, but they might disagree about the particular characteristics of that market.

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