Exposition Universelle (1900)

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Exposition Universelle view
Eiffel Tower at night, 1900
The fountain of the Château d'Eau in the Champ de Mars, seen from the Eiffel Tower, tinted photograph
Pont Alexandre III
Photos of the Hampton Institute by Frances Benjamin Johnston, which were displayed in the Exposé nègre to demonstrate Afro-Americans' positive contributions to American society.

The Exposition Universelle of 1900 was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from April 15 to November 12, 1900, to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate development into the next. The style that was universally present in the Exposition was Art Nouveau.

Contents

[edit] Achievements

The Exposition Universelle was where talking films and escalators were first publicized, and where Campbell's Soup was awarded a gold medal (an image of which still appears on many of the company's products). At the Exposition Rudolf Diesel exhibited his diesel engine, running on peanut oil. Brief films of excerpts from opera and ballet are apparently the first films exhibited publicly with projection of both image and recorded sound. The Exposition also featured many panoramic paintings and extensions of the panorama technique, such as the Cinéorama, Mareorama, and Trans-Siberian Railway Panorama.

The centrepiece of the Palais de l'Optique was the 1.25-metre-diameter (49 in) "Great Exposition Refractor". This telescope was the largest refracting telescope at that time. The optical tube assembly was 60 meters long and 1.5 meters in diameter and was fixed in place due to its mass. Light from the sky was sent into the tube by a movable 2-meter mirror.

The Paris Expo included a "Negro exposition" (Exposition nègre), during which photos by Frances Benjamin Johnston, a friend of Booker T. Washington, of his black students of the Hampton Institute were presented.[1] Partly organized by Booker Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, this exhibition aimed at showing Afro-Americans' positive contributions to American society.[1] Additionally, at a time when lynchings in the US were peaking, a Human Zoo diorama was also present at the exposition, entitled 'Living in Madagascar'.

The Finnish Pavilion at the Exposition was designed by the architectural firm of Gesellius, Lindgren, and Saarinen. It was published in Dekorative Kunst 3 (1900): 457-63 and in L'Architecture à l'Exposition Universelle de 1900, p. 65, Pl. X. Paris: Librairies-Imprimeries Réunies, 1900.

A special committee, led by Gustave Eiffel, awarded a gold medal to Lavr Proskuryakov's project for the Yenisei Bridge in Krasnoyarsk.

Russian sparkling wine defeated all the French entries to claim the internationally coveted 'Grand Prix de Champagne'.[2]

[edit] Gallery

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Anne Maxell, "Montrer l'Autre: Franz Boas et les soeurs Gerhard", in Zoos humains. De la Vénus hottentote aux reality shows, Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boëtsch, Eric Deroo, Sandrine Lemaire, édition La Découverte (2002), p.331-339, in part. p.338
  2. ^ Odessagne Sparkling - Award Winning Wines from the Odessa Vines - 1900 Grand Prix de Champagne

[edit] Literature

  • Alexander C. T. Geppert: Fleeting Cities. Imperial Expositions in Fin-de-Siècle Europe, Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

[edit] External links

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Retrospectively recognised expositions
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BIE recognised horticultural exhibitions
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