[ePub] Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia (Material Worlds Series) by Bruno Giberti at Arts-Photography

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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International Exhibition in PhiladelphiaBy Eric WilliamsDesigning the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia (Material Worlds).by Bruno Giberti. 304 pages. 2002.I saw this book on the shelf of the gift shop during a visit to the Please Touch Museum. which is housed in the Memorial Hall of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition. It was later given to me as a gift by my wife. In the basement of the Please Touch Museum is a room devoted to the Centennial Exhibition. which was the first official Worlds Fair in the United States. This exposure to the exhibition made me curious to learn more about.This book did not exactly satiate that desire. This book was not at all the book I expected it to be. I was expecting a straightforward narrative of the exhibition and its legacy. This book was actually far better than a straightforward narrative about the exhibition. This book provided a context of the exhibition which has caused me to think about how I view things.The exhibit itself was conceived to celebrate and honor 100 years of progress. Yet it was also conceived to provide a forum for comparing like goods and process from around the world. It must be remembered that while it was the worlds introduction to the telephone. the typewriter. Heinz Ketchup and numerous other products it also occurred during the same summer that a gathering of essentially stone age people in transition engaged and wiped out the US Armys Seventh Cavalry Regiment at The Battle of Little Big Horn/Greasy Grass Creek. A time when the wild and woolly frontier of places like Deadwood still thrived. The juxtaposition with in one country in one summer is quite telling.A point that this book tries to make is that the exhibition is focal point in the transition from enlightenment methods and ideals to modernity via the industrial revolution. The focus than is on the concept of order. The tension begins with an older way of rationalizing and ordering in accordance with a taxonomy. of following a product from raw material through final application and isolating each stage for concentrated evaluation. They tried to conceive of a viewing hall where you could go one direction on the grid and see the same product or process in every country. In other words if you were interested in weaving of fabric you could walk a straight line and evaluate looms in 40 or 50 countries. If however you were interested in a single process or country you could walk the grid perpendicular to the first path and instead follow the cloth from raw material. to dyeing. weaving. assembly. all the way to finished garment with in one country and thereby do each country separate to compare the processes and choices.The underlying tension is this taxonomic quest for understanding through order and applying it to a society coming to grips with the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. A society already more anchored in modernity than the enlightenment. A society overwhelmed with information and less interested in specific concentrated study than it is in "the glance". A society whose engine is now stoked by consumption as purchasing power increases through the price decreases. made possible by the industrial revolution; rather than a society focused on quality and overall individual aesthetic. A rising tide of consumption. Society had moved past the organizers ability to categorize and define based on what they knew.This is not normally a topic that would draw me in and hold me. This is not normally a topic which would cause me to give pause and think. This book did however draw me in and hold me and give me cause to pause and think. Ideas and thoughts rattled around in my head for several days. A few years ago we had visited the Tioga Point Museum which is fairly close to visiting the exhibition as describe din this book. Not the scale but the ethos. the spirit of the time. The museum is like a museum of museums stuck display-wise in the 1870s. Traveling into that venue and seeing things displayed as they were in an ordered curio cabinet captures the struggle elucidated on in this text.This book is an excellent addition as a way to look at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. to understand the transition in society at that time. and to challenge our own ways of thought and action.