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The 1937 Paris World's Fair: Into the Exhibits with Dr. Jennie Hirsh

The 1937 Paris World's Fair: Into the Exhibits with Dr. Jennie Hirsh


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Can't make this time? A video recording will be sent to all participants after the seminar.

Composed of innovative architecture and more than 300 pavilions boasting scientific and artistic achievements of the time, the 1937 Paris World’s fair is perhaps the most memorable in history. This seminar takes you into the exhibits and beyond to explore the broader themes of modernity, labor, nationalism brewing at this pivotal moment in history.
This seminar–through detailed maps, plans, diagrams, photographs, period advertising, and even excerpts of short film–will visit the conspicuous architectural structures, including those by Albert Speer for Germany and Boris Iofan for the Soviet Union, and the carefully planned exhibitions of art and industry mounted inside many of the more than 300 pavilions, including now-famous works like Pablo Picasso's Guernica, memorably unveiled in the Spanish Pavilion.
Led by an expert on modern and contemporary art and architecture, Dr. Jennie Hirsh, this interactive seminar explores specific presentations by both well-known and more anonymous artists and architects connected to specific countries and colonies within the already extant framework of a world's fair. Designed to inform curiosity, participants will come away with an increased understanding of the importance of World's Fairs and especially the powerful intersection between tourism and visual culture that occurred in Paris 1937 during this fraught period in world history.
This seminar has been designed to be enjoyed as a standalone experience or as part of Dr. Hirsh's extended series spotlighting each World's Fair in turn. For more details, click here. 

Jennie Hirsh (Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College) is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton and Columbia Universities, as well as pre-doctoral fellowships from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the U.S. Fulbright Commission, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the Wolfsonian FIU. Hirsh has authored essays on artists including Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Yinka Shonibare, and Regina Silveira, and is co-editor, with Isabelle Wallace, of Contemporary Art and Classical Myth (Ashgate 2011).

This conversation is suitable for all ages.

90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.

Customer Reviews

Based on 7 reviews
71%
(5)
29%
(2)
0%
(0)
0%
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0%
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B
Barbara Kyse (San Antonio, US)
Wonderful experience

When signing up, I never focused on the date of the World's Fair. How interesting to see the program in perspective to what was happening in Europe then and within the next few years.

S
Susan Lindsay (Stoney Creek, CA)

Guest did not leave comment

A
A. (Goshen, US)

Guest did not leave comment

J
Joy Hartnett (Inglewood, US)
1937 Paris World's Fair

The gathering forces of war were made evident by Jennie in how the pavilions and art expressed what was coming. It was fascinating to see how this World's Fair expressed these forces.

A
Anonymous (Porto Alegre, BR)

Guest did not leave comment

Customer Reviews

Based on 7 reviews
71%
(5)
29%
(2)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
B
Barbara Kyse (San Antonio, US)
Wonderful experience

When signing up, I never focused on the date of the World's Fair. How interesting to see the program in perspective to what was happening in Europe then and within the next few years.

S
Susan Lindsay (Stoney Creek, CA)

Guest did not leave comment

A
A. (Goshen, US)

Guest did not leave comment

J
Joy Hartnett (Inglewood, US)
1937 Paris World's Fair

The gathering forces of war were made evident by Jennie in how the pavilions and art expressed what was coming. It was fascinating to see how this World's Fair expressed these forces.

A
Anonymous (Porto Alegre, BR)

Guest did not leave comment