Exhibitions - 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair Anniversary Exhibition: #WF60
1964–1965 New York World’s Fair Anniversary Exhibition: #WF60
11.03.24 – 03.09.25
Image: "It's Fun Being at the WORLD'S FAIR". Unofficial promotional postcard, printed by Acacia Card Company, New York, NY. Anonymous gift, 1991. Queens Museum, 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair Collection, New York.
The 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair lives on in the memories held and cherished by attendees. For the sixty-year anniversary, the Queens Museum will mine its collection to reassess the ways in which ideas of progress, nationhood, and representation were advertised and distributed beyond the fairgrounds.
Originally, the Fair was pitched as a celebration of New York City’s 300th anniversary and sought to define the terms of future cities, labor, and domestic life. International and State pavilions appealed to the masses with cultural demonstrations and activated historical narratives, while corporations provided theatrical, scientific, and technological experiences that defied expectations.
In a forthcoming exhibition, the Queens Museum will reframe the impact of the Fair as an imaginative yet market-driven milestone. The exhibition will also address how the Fair served as socio-cultural propaganda during this moment of metamorphosis under the influences of new immigration policy, civil rights and anti-war protests, and technological advancement. Topics to be covered via ephemera and objects from the Queens Museum’s collection include: workers rights, the construction of gender, “Modernization” vs. the environment, and the juxtaposition of concepts explored inside the Fair with the reality unfolding outside the fairgrounds.
Supporters
The Queens Museum is housed in the New York City Building, which is owned by the City of New York.
The Museum is supported, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with Mayor Eric Adams, the Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, and the New York City Council under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne E. Adams.
Major funding is generously provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ford Foundation, Hearst Foundations, Jerome Foundation, Lambent Foundation, MacMillan Family Foundation, Mellon Foundation, E.A. Michelson Philanthropy, New York Community Trust, Richmond County Savings Foundation, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
