The World's Fair Podcast, Episode 22: Alfred Heller

In episode 22 of the World's Fair Podcast, writer Alfred Heller is our guest.

Alfred Heller founded World's Fair Magazine in 1981 and has been to 19 world's fairs so far... from 1939 to 2010. He talks about many of those world's fairs and why he thinks world's fairs are still relevant.

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World's Fairs and the End of Progress by Alfred Heller

WorldsFairs.com

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The Wonderful World of Chemistry at the 1964-'65 New York World's Fair

...from the duPont Pavilion at the 1964-'65 New York World's Fair.

It's pretty incredible: incredible lyrics, incredible choreography, incredible mixture of live performances with film projection, and the incredible use of the "E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company" as a repeated lyric.

It would be wonderful to see crazy production like this (but in Chinese) at Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

Greetings from Shanghai

This trip has been pretty amazing so far. Unfortunately, it's taken me a few days to be able to access my blog in order to report.



Friday, I was honored to be the guest of the Australian Pavilion for a quick tour around the Expo 2010 site under construction and an amazing look at the Australian Pavilion under construction. It's truly amazing how much creativity and time-consuming work goes into creating a pavilion that likely been in operation for just 6 months, hosting 5 million of the 70+ million visitors expected.

I'm deeply grateful to the folks at Ogilvy PR and World Expo Blog who were able to arrange my visit, Michael Darragh and Lina Han. Our Australian Pavilion host Peter Sams, who I was delighted to find out was a reader of my site and blog, is the pavilion director and veteran of the Australian Pavilion at Expo 2005 in Aichi.

I've posted some photos from the visit at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/expomuseum/

Saturday, I played the role of a more traditional tourist and visited People's Park and the adjacent shopping areas. In People's Park, the city has an Urban Planning Museum which, right now, is mostly about their preparations for Expo 2010.

I was rather tickled to see a couple of my photos in an exhibit about the history of expo mascots. It's rather satisfying to see photos of my own world's fair memorabilia collection in a museum on the other side of the planet.

Haibao and ads for Expo 2010 blanket nearly every square foot of surface in this town that's not under construction. As I type this in my hotel room, I can hear the sounds of construction from various places in the city. As with Nagoya and Hannover, which I also visited in the year before their respective expos, the whole city is getting ready and everything seems to have the same deadline: 1 May 2010, opening day of Expo 2010.

I have plans to meet more folks that are working behind the scenes here in Shanghai. It must be thrilling to be working on all the little projects that will come together next year in the largest world's fair in history. I'm reminded of what it must have been like to work on the World's Columbian Exposition the year before: 1892. I find myself pondering what sort of anticipation there was in 1938, the year before New York's 1939-'40 New York World's Fair. In so many ways, I see parallels between Shanghai's Expo 2010 and Osaka's Expo '70. Imagine what it must have been like being a part of putting that together in 1969!

Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition Centennial

2009 marks the 100th anniversary of Seattle's Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and plans are already afoot for the new year.

There are two sites info about 2009's plans:
http://www.AYP100.org/ and http://www.AYPE.org/

Tent of Tomorrow

Whenever I go to New York, I make a pilgrimage to Flushing Meadows, the site of both the 1939-'40 and 1964-'65 New York World's Fair. I try to imagine what it would have been like to have attended those expositions. The New York State Pavilion from the '64-'65 expo, even then, was in sad state of affairs. Earlier this year, they ripped out the exterior elevators to the observation saucers for fear that they would fall off.

As posted in the Queens Chronicle:

In an about-face, the city is now seeking state landmarking for the decaying 44-year-old New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Park.

Although it was the city that abetted the pavilion’s neglect, Parks Department officials now say they are encouraging state landmarking — which would lead to federal status — to secure funding to restore the structure built for the 1964-65 World’s Fair.

Officials say a National Register of Historic Places listing would make the city eligible for money to shore up and restore the site.