The Future of the Past: The Representation of the First Brazilian Republic in the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18441/ibam.21.2021.77.71-95

Keywords:

Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition, Brazil;, First Republic, Design History, Fine Arts

Abstract

Four years after seizing power, the Republicans who founded the United States of Brazil mounted a representation at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Under the threat of a monarchist insurrection and in order to affirm their authority, the Republicans employed this exhibition to re-write the Brazilian imperial past and ascertain their political future. Relying on an analysis of design history, this article discusses exhibition displays –carriage from D. Pedro I framed as a bygone past, the installation of a golden pyramid to flaunt regional power, and a selection of Fine Arts that revealed the Republicans’ desire for a particular social order– as points of access to unpack this first republican representation at World’s Fairs, and the competing political and economic interests behind this show of order and progress.

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Published

2021-07-15

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 77 (2021)

Section

Dossier

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