World’s Fair, Fair World?
Part Two (Diorama Series): The 1939-1940 World’s Fair, 80+ years later
BACK in 2020, when I heard that baseball season would no longer include fans, I turned a broken-down buffet silverware and napkins drawer into a diorama adorned with junk I found in drawers and my garage. It took hours and hours I could have more productively spent responding to graduate student papers or reading a huge Russian novel. I titled my diorama: Pandemic Park.
After the January 6th insurrection, I repeated my mistake and messed with the frame for the silverware and napkin drawer. Diorama #2. As my step-father was fond of saying, the brain is the second organ to go. I call this one: World’s Fair, Fair World?
Before getting started with what this is all about, a point of clarification is in order. My wife—a real artist—schooled me on terminology. Apparently, “diorama” is not a precise-enough word to describe my concoction. Dioramas, she patiently explained, are re-enactments of a scene. Wikipedia defines a diorama as “a scenic painting, viewed through a peephole, in which changes in color and direction of illumination simulate changes in the weather, time of day, etc.” Two observations here: (1) this definition has a kind of slight pornographic feel to it—not my intention. I don’t want to sneak a peek at the point I am trying to make, but rather to expose it to the full light of day. (2) I suppose etc. can be considered a legitimate encyclopedic entry. It’s my guess that the author decided to go to the refrigerator, midway, and forgot to come back, leaving us with the task of filling in the blanks. I digress. Apparently, what I have created is not a diorama, but a “3-D conceptual assemblage.” OK, whatever, etc.
Before describing the highlights from each of its two panels, here’s my point (in the off chance you have better things to do):
The 1939-1940 World’s Fair in New York was billed as a global “vision” for the world of tomorrow, American style. It was all about progress. Enamored with inventions and of promise (truly a tchotchke paradise), it had a certain manic and precious feel to it, despite foreboding news reports about a world descending into chaos. The World’s Fair holds special meaning for two familial reasons: (1) my mother insisted—apocryphally, I might add—that my great uncle designed the iconic Trylon and Perisphere for which it is best known; and (2) my father performed there, and this is the focus of my “assemblage.” In the first of two panels, I include a photograph of him playing the part of the President of the United States because the theatre group he had joined in Harlem needed a white guy for the part, and he was only too happy to oblige. Given the fact that he lived to see Obama’s ascendance to the presidency, one would think we have gotten somewhere.
Alas, my father also lived long enough to see Donald Trump. I question the progress in race equality and justice these intervening 80 years. While the World’s Fair (panel one) was quintessentially American and optimistic (of course the world should embrace what we stand for, amiright?) the black experience (panel two) focuses on our persistent and unrelenting national pain. For the second panel, it was hard to choose which references and symbols of contemporary racism would best illustrate this. I began to see the utility of etc. because there simply is way too much to include in a 16-inch-square diorama space (er...conceptual assemblage).
Details follow:
The World’s Fair (left panel)
The backing from an accordion of postcards sums up World’s Fair central themes:
“On the theory that the best commemoration is a rededication, the New York World’s Fair 1939 celebrates the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States, by dedicating itself to the task of building ‘A Better World of Tomorrow.’
The eyes of the Fair are on the future—not in the sense of peering toward the unknown nor attempting to foretell the events of tomorrow and the shape of things to come, but in the sense of presenting a new and clearer view of today in preparation for tomorrow; a view of the forces and ideas that prevail...as well as the machines.
To the visitors, the Fair will say: “Here are the materials, ideas, and forces at work in our world. These are the tools with which the World of Tomorrow must be made. They are all interesting and much effort has been expended to lay them before you in an interesting way. Familiarity with today is the best preparation for the future.”
As professors are inclined to say, “would anyone like to deconstruct this?”
I paste up a “Welcome Visitors” ribbon and a circular “Hello Folks” nametag, filled out on the opposite side by a cheery Wisconsinite who must have packed his family into a Ford Deluxe Woodie station wagon and set off for New York City to see the world without needing a passport. Road trip!
The photograph was taken at a rehearsal for an adaptation of “The Life of Booker T. Washington.” Ossie Davis (of “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever” fame) stands behind my father. The actual performance took place during “Negro Week,” as part of The American Commons exhibition space. I wrote a chapter of my book about an imaginary conversation between the thespians during the read-through. If you’ve got time on your hands, you can read it here.
A slit in a mostly-sealed little envelope labeled “Golden Key Contest” reveals a gold numbered ticket distributed at the entry gate. Winners could get a free Plymouth, Ford, or Chevrolet. They gave away 170 of them! Imagine if that key was a winner!
I added a Statue of Liberty from an old pop-up book about New York.
Across the entire bottom of both panels, I added a Black Lives Matter to reflect the passage of time from 1939-1940 to today. Argue as one may with Booker T. Washington’s role in history, his point was clear: black lives mattered then and black lives matter now. In short, this piece is about both saying and seeing; rhetoric and reality; progress and systemic racism. An eraser and chalk sit on the silver chalkboard shelf, ready for Santayana’s lesson about learning from history or being doomed to repeat it and, perhaps, the World’s Fair version: “Familiarity with today is the best preparation for the future.”
Space Between (the two panels)
I threaded red, white, and blue ribbons to symbolize American national pride spreading upward toward the World’s Fair banner and glued Scrabble letters vertically to spell “O S-A-Y…” I added arrows pointing to the left panel where I have chalked filled in the rest of the phrase: (o say) “…can you see?” for our anthem and to the right panel for (o say) “…their names.” The promise of patriotism meets a dream deferred eight decades following the World’s Fair.
Fair World? (right panel):
Sticking out from the top, a red 45 rpm record from “Fantasy” records of Dave Brubeck’s song, “A Foggy Day.” I found another label from Capitol Records — just to hit the viewer over the head with the infamy and trauma of January 6th, 2021. An ominous plastic medieval figurine (“the man with horns”) aims his club toward the capital. Blue hands grip the 45, representing the mob, delirious with blood lust from binging on mind-numbing ideological Kool-Aid. attempting to steer democracy away from its moorings and spin it out of control.
At this point, the flag unravels into separate red, white, and blue shreds. A silver chain hangs from the top of the panel, evoking chain-gangs, incarceration, and the original sin of American slavery from America cannot extricate ourselves.
A taped copy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate (from my mother’s pop-up book about his presidency) and an Obama-Biden campaign button serve as a contemporary bookend to—and an echo of—the World’s Fair 150-year commemoration of George Washington at one end, my father’s role bit part in 1940, and our first black president. C’mon, surely that’s progress. Yes?
A chalk-filtered Gordon Parks photograph entitled: “A Man Becomes Invisible,” taken in 1952, just a few months after the publication of Ralph Ellison’s groundbreaking novel, “Invisible Man.” Again, it’s about seeing.
A game timer (sand on the bottom), shows that time has run out. OK, class, here is your discussion prompt: has the future depicted in the 1939-1940 World’s Fair lived up to the dream of its utopian world of tomorrow? Is “a more perfect union” possible? A work in progress? Implausible? Dangerous? Talk amongst yourselves.
On the thick right-hand border, an arrow points to Scrabble letters for Q-A-N-O-N—a clear violation of Scrabble rules or, for that matter, anything remotely associated with democracy, truth, justice, and the American Way (a 1938 Superman reference, by the way). A fair world? What shall be our standard? Please unpack, etc.
Beneath it, a button reads “So it goes?” for which I must ask: have we not seen the signs of rising fascism all along? Are we that ready to dismiss this as some kind of Trump-inspired, momentary aberration? Is it okay that MAGA turns back the clock to an era before the fourteenth amendment? Or that Mitch McConnell and his ilk can get away with their sanctimonious apology for domestic terrorism? My answer: a rolly-eye pointing downward. No, o say we can’t see. And so, on the chalkboard ledge holding erasers and chalk, a mini wind-up box on the right plays “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?” (written, by the way, in 1938), but somehow sounds more creaky and plaintive than hopeful and cute. Beside it, a plastic brain sits (disembodied, as if from the truth). On the far right end and at an angle, a red dog-collar light (found in a dog park) literally flashes red when pressed.
The takeaway: perhaps a re-evaluation of “The eyes of the Fair are on the future and the shape of things to come” might be in order. So there it is—a dioramic, 3-D conceptual assemblage dripping with un-nuanced political righteous indignation. I might add that this whole process involved a bit of self-restraint. In an earlier iteration, I duct-taped a curvy drain pipe (from our old gutters) spewing red, white, and blue shredded neckties. I abandoned it because, well, this whole thing is over the top as it is and I don’t want to look up from my desk on occasion to see a multi-colored noose.
I’ve even picked up a life lesson along the way—that it’s probably best to leave art to real artists, like my wife.
I’m off to the refrigerator and other stuff, etc.
