Documenting Spectacle: An Artist’s Notes on the Shanghai Expo
by Meghann McCrory
In June, I visited Expo Shanghai 2010, the largest world’s fair in history. A central part of my artistic practice has focused on ideas of utopia and paradise and their expression in architecture and landscaping. These interests led me to the history of glass architecture, and to world’s fairs as a key line in that genealogy. World’s fairs have always been to some degree about the future, and glass has a long history of symbolizing various utopian tomorrows. From the Crystal Palace to Buckminster Fuller’s biosphere, the fairs have featured colossal displays of mind-bending architecture and breakthrough technological gadgetry in a performance of economic and cultural virility.