Seattle’s Space Needle was part of a World’s Fair. (Wikipedia photo)
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
MAY 13, 2022 | You don’t hear the term or see much about a “World’s Fair” these days. There are a few reasons why.
Congress in 1999 saw the costs of the World’s Fair, and passed legislation banning U.S. participation in them. The last World’s Fair in these states was in 1984 in New Orleans, which proved financially disastrous. Chicago tried to attract such a fair in 1992, but that idea collapsed.
These days Minneapolis, Minn. is trying to get named the site of a World Expo in 2027. It worked hard to get an Expo in 2023, but that was awarded to Argentina.
Since 1928 the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) has served as an international sanctioning body for international exhibitions. Registered expositions are held every five years. Specialized Expos can be sanctioned in the in-between years, though the BIE shys away from the Olympics years.
High specialized pavilion costs and design are major factors in fewer fairs. Some countries form geographical blocs to share space in pavilions. Sometimes prefabricated structures are used to minimize costs for developing countries, as well as countries to share space.
An Expo was in Milan (2015). Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, held the most recent Specialized Expo in 2017 while Dubai in the United Arab Emirates hosted Expo 2020 (which was postponed to 2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic).It ended in March 2022. Buenos Aires, Argentina, which had been selected to host the next Specialized Expo in 2023, but announced its withdrawal with no reschedule date.
The new bid out of Minnesota will be pretty much the same as other world expos: a big installation will be constructed in Bloomington near the Mall of America. It will have exhibits extolling a future-looking theme of “Healthy People, Healthy Planet” paid for by a combination of public and private funds. So far, no country has announced a challenge to the Minneapolis bid.
World’s Fairs aren’t as sexy or imaginative as they used to be. Yet Seattle’s Space Needle is a reminder of their Fair and still an attraction. But what can you remember from the Knoxville, Tenn. World’s Fair of 1982? Many from around here attended, but how many of us can cite one particular distinction?
One observer notes: “Then there’s the problem of proximity. There hasn’t been a World’s Fair in North America since 1986 in Vancouver. During the fair’s heydays, wealthy and middle class families would make pilgrimages to see the wonders firsthand, but the internet put an end to that. How can a World’s Fair be viable when everyone has a camera in their pocket? A quick search on your phone has replaced an expensive trip across our nation or to a foreign country.”
In 1792, the first World’s Fair was in Prague in the modern-day Czech Republic. The first industrial exhibition was on the occasion of the coronation of Leopold II as a king of Bohemia, which took place in Clementinum, and celebrated the considerable sophistication of manufacturing methods in the Czech lands during that time period.
The United States now has a “U.S. Wants to Compete for a World Expo Act” law, setting the stage for Minnesota to make its case to host the Fair in 2023. If Minnesota is successful in securing the honor of hosting the World’s Fair it would be the first World’s Fair in the United States in almost 40 years .
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