Drawing the Future
The 1939 World’s Fair in New York left an indelible imprint on the American psyche. With its theme "Building the World of Tomorrow," the fair sought to renew Americans’ belief in themselves and the nation’s future after ten years of severe economic depression and social unrest. Drawing the Future: Design Drawings for the 1939 New York World’s Fair features architectural designs and futuristic drawings that provided the vision for the 1939 World’s Fair and its complex of pavilions. The exhibition opens at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum on Saturday, January 29 (see box below for information on the opening night party) and runs through April 30, 2000.
Drawing the Future displays 40 original presentation and design drawings selected from the Museum of the City of New York’s collection of nearly 400 works acquired in 1941 from the World’s Fair organizers. Drawn by twenty-five of the most successful designers and architectural illustrators of the time, the renderings were translated into postcards, guidebooks, advertisements, and souvenirs, as well as buildings, signage, and design elements at the fair. Drawing the Future displays drawings for many of the projects that were actually constructed and offers a look at some of the other unique conceptions that were never built.
While numerous shows and books have explored the 1939 World’s Fair, this is the first exhibition to showcase the avant-garde architects, designers, and renderers who made history by envisioning the future, such as Hugh Ferriss, Chester Price, Raymond Loewy, Ely Kahn, Henry Dreyfuss, and William Lescaze & J. Gordon Carr. The drawings wonderfully capture the moment in design history when geometric Art Deco design gave way to the curvaceous forms of streamline design.
The works in Drawing the Future bring to life a vision of futuristic industrial design shared by many American architects of the late 1930s who were eager to point the way from an economically-depressed present to an optimistic and streamline-designed "tomorrow." Images of thrusting pylons and massive spheres promoted an optimistic view of a safe, efficient future brought about by technological progress. The exhibition captures the mood of New York in 1939, when members of the public flocked to the parallel universe of the World’s Fair to be introduced to new technologies——such as nylon stockings, Plexiglas, and network television—— that would soon have a very real impact on their daily lives.
Inaugruated on April 30, 1939, the New York World’s Fair remained open through October 26, 1940 at a site in Queens. Admission was 75 cents for adults and 25 cents for children. Visitors could meander through the many different thematic zones, among them amusement, communications, food, government, production, distribution, and transportation. Exhibitors included approximately sixty countries, the League of Nations, thirty-three states and territories, the federal Works Progress Administration, and the City of New York.
At the close of the Fair, most of the original blueprints, renderings, and actual structures were destroyed. Drawing the Future offers a glimpse of the most accurate remaining record of the intentions of the architects and designers who created this momentous event. Thus, the exhibit is an exploration not only of the greatest of all 20th century world’s fairs, but of the impact left on an entire generation of architects by the design precedents it established.