This week in art history: The Great Exhibition of 1851
You can check out my first two ‘This week…’ posts here: WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, and Kraftwerk — Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.
167 years ago on May 1st, 1851, the Great Exhibition opened in Hyde Park, London. While its aim was primarily to celebrate modern industrial design and technology (with, of course, a sharp focus on British contributions), it’s significance as a milestone in the history of exhibitions, international curation and public access to the arts and design cannot be overstated.
What made the exhibition so great?
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was certainly not the first example of a large-scale public exhibition; Paris already had a long history of national expos stretching all the way back to the final years of the French Revolution, focussing on the nascent Republic’s industrial achievements.
However, it was the first international event of this type. There were over 13,000 exhibits with 100,000 objects; half from Britain and its empire and half from ‘foreign states’. This coming together of nations — including fairly recent historical adversaries such as France, Russia and the United States — would have been the first time a majority of the attendees experienced another culture in a context unrelated to armed or diplomatic conflict.
Some of the most popular items on display were the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which at the time was the largest ever found, Frederick Bakewell’s ‘fascimile’ device (i.e., a precursor to the fax machine), Robert Stephenson’s hydraulic press for building bridges, and the 16-foot-long ‘Trophy Telescope’.
The temporary structure housing the exhibition was itself a major innovation in design and construction, comprising thousands of prefabricated cast-iron frames and 300,000 sheets of glass (leading to its name of the ‘Crystal Palace’). The invention of the telegraph several years before helped to expedite the process of coordinating the manufacture and transportation of materials from Smethwick and Birmingham further north, and meant everything was completed in less than 9 months. [This video gives a good sense of the scale of the operation].
An exhibition for the people
The purpose of the exhibition was of course to promote Britain’s achievements on a global stage, but also to reaffirm to its citizenry the healthy state of the empire (memories of the European revolutions of 1848 were no doubt still raw in the minds of British monarchists and government officials). To this end, efforts were made to ensure all members of society were able to attend; although early admission and season tickets were reserved for the wealthy, a tiered pricing system and reduced cost of one shilling on certain days allowed even the lower classes to come.
By the exhibition’s end on October 15th, a total of six million people had attended (equivalent to a third of the population of Britain at the time). The visitors were introduced to never-before-seen technologies, artifacts and concepts, forever changing government and public perception of exhibitions as a worthwhile cultural investment.
Amazingly, we’re still feeling the benefits today. The exhibition’s massive commercial success — a profit of £186,000 (about £18,370,000 in 2015) — not only helped to fund a subsequent international expo in 1862, but also laid foundations for the Victoria and Albert Museum, Science Museum and Natural History Museum (all of which are now located south of the original site in Hyde Park).
Make exhibitions ‘Great’ again
I think it would actually be a pretty good time for the UK to hold another exhibition at such a scale; in light of Brexit, consider our intensifying need to maintain commercial and cultural links to Europe and establish new ones with the rest of the world. We could also do with reminding ourselves of our rich international history and future potential.
For it to be an official ‘World Fair’ though, we’d need to wait. The Bureau International des Expositions has overseen these fairs since 1928, and awarded the next ‘Universal’ level event (as opposed to ‘Specialized’ events) to Dubai in 2020. Applications for the next edition in 2025 are already closed (one of Azerbaijan, Japan or Russia will be awarded in November).
The Great Exhibition of 2030, then?
Feral Horses is the Stock Exchange for Art. We have reached our £100,000 target and are now overfunding on equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs.
Curious? Discover our campaign here.
