Materiality and Spectacle 2015

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The Corliss Engine, as exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition by President Grant, powered all the machines in machinery hall- and stood as a large testament to the American horsepower. In his classic nearly-poetic style, Howells described the massive…

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This is a matchbox made of plated tin with an image of the Agricultural building of the Chicago World's Fair from 1893 on the front. It is curved on the one side where it reads "Wax Vestas Made in England" . A vesta is a smaller, English version of a…

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A mural depicting the surrender of French troops to the German Empire at Sedan in 1870. While this particular mural was completed in 1884, it retains the aspects of the painting shown at the Philadelphia Centennial that angered W.D. Howells, with one…

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This is an image of part of the Chinese display. The amount of items, chairs, tables, cloth, and pottery show that the Chinese came to impress. However, the neatness of the display shows that the workers put time and effort into making the display…

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This is a depiction of Japanese porcelain ware in the 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition.

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"A 24 page soft-cover program of the Nineteenth Annual Fair of the Bedford County Agriculture Society held in Shelbyville, Tennessee beginning on September 5, 1889. The booklet includes lists of stockholders, advertisements, and the agricultural…

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Two images of the Mitchell Corn Palace in South Dakota from 1885 and 2013. This is the only Corn Palace left in the US. Another image shows how the mosaics were constructed.
-Madeleine Hodges

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An aerial view of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds and racetrack in 1937, nine years after the fair attended by Basil Lee in F. Scott Fitzgerald's A Night at the Fair. The racetrack is the same as the one described in the story, which reveals the…

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This is a butter sculpture of Pres. Roosevelt that was presented at the 1905 St. Louis World's Fair. The photograph appears to be taken in the artist's studio rather than an exhibitionary situation.

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Along with the Dreaming Iolanthe, Caroline Brooks also created the Awakening of Iolanthe in 1878. It bears a striking resemblance to Dreaming Iolanthe though created two years later. The amount of detail in the sculpture shows that she knew the…
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