Working Number | Name | Holding Museum | Date | Materials | Curator Justification |
UK 168 | Guernsey and Jersey, Malta and Ceylon (from Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition) | The British Library | 1854 (publication of the book) | | This painting of the interior of Crystal Palace is by Owen Jones. It shows how the exhibition was on two levels, the upper floor hosting exhibitions about “all nations” separated by huge tapestries. Yellow, blue and red dominated the colour scheme that was used tastefully throughout in accordance with contemporary decorative taste. |
PD 052 | The Palace of Illusions, Universal Exposition 1900 | Brown University Library | | | While the interior of the Palace of Electricity is typical of an industrial structure, it nonetheless reveals its derivation from the Great Mosque of Córdoba. The main room, called the “Palace of Illusions”, was furnished with a series of horseshoe arches, the mirror-covered surfaces of which reflected the light from the lamps, exalting the incredible possibilities of electrical power. |
FR 113 | Gustave Eiffel. The Eiffel Tower in 1889. | National Library of France | 1889 | | The Eiffel Tower, depicted on a poster for the exhibition held in Paris in 1878, is seen as a symbol of France’s industrial innovation and vitality. The other images represent the Palace of Industries, where the “Dôme Central” was the first building to use electricity to large extent, and the “Machine Gallery”, intended to promote modern industrial machines, but with some exhibits that looked well into the technological future. |
PD 045 | One Arab man and two Arab children in front of Kabyle house, Paris Exposition, 1889 | The Library of Congress | 1889 | | During the exhibition held in Paris in 1889, the “Histoire de l’habitation humaine” (History of Human Habitation) exhibit was criticised, even though it gained huge public favour, because it was considered far from accurate. The restitution of the autochthon architecture sometimes made use of “background actors”, further underlining the racial stereotyping typical of the time. |