Research at NYPL, Doc Chat
Doc Chat Episode Six: Visions of Modernity at the 1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939 New York World's Fair promised a view of the "World of Tomorrow" through its dazzling displays of up-to-the-minute cultural and technological advancements. The fair's iconic posters were the topic of the most recent episode of Doc Chat, which aired to an enthusiastic audience on October 15, 2020.
An ongoing series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs a NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Six, NYPL's Tal Nadan and art and graphic design historian Ann Schoenfeld analyzed the design of World's Fair promotional posters and discussed how visual language was employed to underscore the modernism of the fair.
Doc Chat Episode 6: Visions of Modernity from The New York Public Library on Vimeo.
A transcript of this event is available here.
Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.
Episode Six: Featured Collections
The poster that Tal and Ann discussed:
Advertisement for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, designed by Joseph Binder and printed by Grinnell Lithography Company, Inc. (20 x 13.5 inches)
The Binder poster is part of a set of posters located in the Promotion, Rights, and Merchandising folders of the New York World’s Fair 1939-1940 records held at NYPL. Tal and Ann compared it to a few other posters in that folder, including this one by John Carleton Atherton [ID 2014779] and its transformation into a YMCA advertisement [ID 2014782].
Episode Six: Readings and Resources
John E. Findling, editor and Kimberly D. Pelle, assistant editor, Historical dictionary of world's fairs and expositions, 1851-1988 (Greenwood Press, 1990).
Robert W. Rydell, John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle, Fair America (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000)
To read more about the international climate leading up to the New York World’s Fair in 1939, see Robert Kargon’s chapter “Whose Modernity?” in World’s Fairs on the Eve of War (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016).
While Tal and Ann spoke quite a bit about color, the majority of the over 13,000 digitized items from the New York World’s Fair records are in black and white. This home movie from the Prelinger Archive found on the Internet Archive is in color—the Trylon and Perisphere are found at minute 7:20.
For Joseph Binder's own take on his work, you can read his “On Developing the Present-Day Style” The American Magazine of Art, Vol. 29, No. 7 (July 1936), 464- 469, 486, accessible via JSTOR with your library card.
A wealth of primary and secondary material can also be located in the Library’s catalog. For questions specific about the archival collections for New York’s World’s Fairs, feel free to contact Manuscripts and Archives staff.
Finally, for additional teaching ideas, see the short essays gathered by NYPL in this digital exhibit.
Join the Doc Chat Conversation
Doc Chat takes place on Zoom every Thursday at 3:30 PM. Upcoming episodes tackle a range of topics, from LGBTQ+ activism around prison opposition to modernism and women photographers. Check them out on NYPL's calendar, and make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter, which will include links to register. A video of each episode will be posted on the NYPL blog shortly after the program, so be sure to check back regularly to keep on top of the Doc Chat conversation.
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