Looking Backward at the World of Tomorrow

Education Programs with Drawing the Future: Design Drawings for the 1939 New York World’s Fair

Travels through Tomorrow: The Future and American Culture

Brian Horrigan

Sunday, February 6, 2:00 p.m.

In their visions of the future, 1939 World’s Fair designers like Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes drew on ideas and images that had developed from the late 19^th-century onward. Fiction, movies, toys, radio shows, and comic books influenced the look of the fair just as much as architectural styles and theories. In this slide lecture, Brian Horrigan places the New York World’s Fair within this longer imaginative tradition.

Mr. Horrigan is exhibit curator at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. He co-organized (with Joseph Corn) the 1984 Smithsonian exhibition Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future.

The World of Tomorrow, or How the 1939 New York World’s Fair Lives Forever in the Theme Park

Karal Ann Marling

Sunday, March 5, 2:00 p.m

The New York World’s Fair offered visitors a compelling experience of a totally-designed environment. Its building designs were easy to read and its plan–with color-coded avenues all leading to the central Trylon and Perisphere–made it easy to find one’s way. The fair also delivered on its promise of leisurely fun. All of these elements inspired the postwar development of Disneyland and later theme parks. In this slide lecture, Karal Ann Marling explores the design of the 1939 fair and its impact on the theme park.

The always provocative and entertaining Karal Ann Marling is a leading expert on American art and popular culture. She has published over a dozen books on wide-ranging subjects including the history of the Minnesota State Fair. She teaches art history and American studies at the University of Minnesota.

Something’s Cooking in the Mid-Century Kitchen of the Future

Bruce Wright

Sunday, March 19, 2;00 p.m.

World’s fairs have always introduced the public to new technologies, beginning with the first fair in 1851 London. Along with other consumer products, the 1939 New York Fair showcased new technologies and futuristic product designs for the home. The optimism expressed by these stylish designs helped pull the economy out of the Depression-era doldrums and created the suburban home of the 1950s. Bruce Wright discusses how designers developed consumer demand for products for the American home.

Editor of Fabric & Architecture magazine, Bruce Wright is also an architect and design historian. He co-curated (with Mark Lawson) the 1998 exhibition The Future by Design for the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.