by Jon Lackman | 29 May 2007 | Asia
In the latest issue of Late Imperial China (27:2), Susan R. Fernsebner writes on the Nanyang Exposition of 1910, “China’s first nation-wide exposition”: “expo organizers pursued not only an inventory of empire and a systematic evaluation of its material components (objects, artwork, products, and technologies), but also intended, through the use of both material pedagogy and spectacle to help transform subjects into citizens.” Elites turned to the arts (and technology) to further the cause of nation building, seeing in the expo “a vision of mass spectacle rhetorically and materially associated with production and consumption, inextricably tied to the intertwined logic of nation and market.” “While … the major fairs held in Europe and the United States presented a vision of a strict colonialist hierarchy … expositions such as that held by the Qing dynasty in Nanjing suggested a much more open field of competition.” In the eyes of one observer, it achieved “through that assembly of objects and studious citizens a material modernity that transcended the West.” (Factoid: Oz creator L. Frank Baum “published the first known book on the decoration of shop windows.”)
