#New York Worlds Fair

[man-and-his-world]

Remnants of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair left in Flushing Meadows Park in 1942.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Designs by Norman Bel Geddes (1930s)

[c86]

A Visit to the New York World's Fair with Peter and Wendy, 1964

Artwork by Catherine Barnes

[newyorkthegoldenage]

One of the artists commissioned to create a new work for the 1939-40 World's Fair was the sculptor Augusta Savage. A leading member of the Harlem Renaissance, she was the only black woman to be so honored.

Her piece, intended to celebrate African-Americans’ contributions to music, showed a kneeling black man holding a bar of music and 12 black chorus singers representing strings on a harp, the sounding board of which was no less than the hand of God. She called it Lift Every Voice and Sing, a nod to a poem by her friend James Weldon Johnson that was later set to music and adopted as the black "national anthem" by the NAACP.

The work stood 16 feet tall and was made of plaster that had been lacquered to look like black basalt. She was paid $360 for it (around $8,000 in today's dollars) and it was placed in the courtyard of the Contemporary Arts Building, near one of the Fair’s gates. Fair officials renamed it The Harp, which Savage reportedly hated. Small metal replicas were sold as souvenirs, and images of it were reproduced on postcards.

When the Fair ended, Savage had no money to remove and store her sculpture, or to cast the large piece in bronze, as she had with other, smaller works. So, like all the other "temporary" artwork created for the Fair, it was destroyed by a bulldozer.

In 2017, a NY Times op-ed piece by the filmmaker Aviva Kempner proposed that a full-size replica of the sculpture be created and placed in front of the National Museum of African-American History & Culture in Washington. So far, there has been no movement towards carrying that idea out.

Photos: top and center, NYPL. Bottom, illustration from the book Harlem: Negro Metropolis (E.P. Dutton 1940) via The Wolfsonian–FIU.

[humanoidhistory]

Bell Picturephone, 1964.

(Digital Museum)

[nemfrog]

Were you? Krider's glories of the garden for 1940. 1940.

Internet Archive

[misforgotten2]

No need to sign up, I’m going to be there when they open it. I’ve already have my tickets to the 5,001st Superbowl. Go Eurostan Nanotrons!

1964 New York World’s Fair Guide Book

[noconcessions]

[stone-cold-groove]

Heinz Exhibit catalog - 1939 New York World’s Fair.

[archiveofaffinities]

80-foot Uniroyal Tire Ferris Wheel, Worlds Fair, New York, New York 1964-1965

[kafkasapartment]

World's Fair, New York City, 1939. Alfred Eisenstaedt. Silver gelatin print.

[art-of-illlustration]

Joseph Binder, New York World's Fair, 1939

[dcbinges]

New York World's Fair Comics #2 (1940) by Jack Burnley

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Atlantic Holidays promoting the 1939 World's Fair.

Photo: World Photos/Alamy

[humanoidhistory]

New York World's Fair poster by Bob Peak.

[nemfrog]

Inside the Food Building. New York World's Fair. 1939. Fair guide in French.

Internet Archive