1964–1965 New York World’s Fair Anniversary: #WF60

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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.