Charles C. Dawson

The Century of Progress International Exposition invoked globalist ideology through imperialist logic and national identity. While there were many exhibits that promoted corporate innovation to promote consumerism, mass consumerism was intrinsic to a modernist future. Thus, global ideology was not as distinct from nationalist rhetoric rather the two were in perpetual conversation as nations tried to redefine themselves in the interwar period. Imperialism appeared in the ethnographic displays that lined the Midway of the fair. The displays function as modals in the trajectory from savage to civilized that underscored the push for modernism which itself was a global ideology. There was a way that the fair sought to organize the world and its civilizations.

I propose an engagement with the ephemera surrounding the Darkest Africa exhibit to consider the spatial and visual manifestations of modernist discourse through the imaging of the past and "other." The fair upheld modernity through the exaggerated exhibitions that allude to the tension of the past as equally within and outside of modernity. The trajectory of progress required the spatial and visual manipulation of entire cultures. The location of the villages along the Midway centered presentations of the "other" that starkly contrasted the optics of modernity. The fair defined not only modernity, but also the appropriate type of modern humankind.