Whose Fair? Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition by James Gilbert (review)

BOOK REVIEW WINTER 2010 75 In Whose Fair? Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition, James Gilbert uses the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition as a case study to explore the differences between memory and history . A professor of history at the University of Maryland, Gilbert has published a number of books that have dealt variously with world’s fairs, urban history, and other topics in cultural history ranging from religion to masculinity. Those who remember an event like the St. Louis world’s fair attach an emotional quality to their “personal” history of the event and are attracted by its tangible and nostalgic legacies, such as souvenirs, monuments, and other symbols of their experience. Historians, on the other hand, study the fair by using its documentary record and seem less concerned with many aspects of the fair’s material culture . In Whose Fair?, Gilbert poses the simple question suggested by his title. Whose fair is the Louisiana Purchase Exposition? Is it the fair of the historians, who see in it abundant evidence of institutionalized racism , youthful imperialism, and a sense of American nationalism, or is it the fair of the visitors, who remember the excitement of the midway attractions, the exotic appearance of the primitive people on exhibit, and the overwhelming crowds? Is there a place where history and memory meet one another? Although Gilbert has spent years being a historian, he recognizes the value of memory , and especially collective memory, in his understanding of the past. Whose Fair? is less a narrative history of the exposition than a wide ranging discussion of its historiography and photographic record, of its lasting impact on St. Louis, and of the evidence provided by individual and group experiences as these have been remembered. At the beginning of his study, Gilbert attempts to diminish the historical significance of world’s fairs by placing them in the larger context of display culture and outdoor entertainment, comparing them to such wellestablished institutions as trade shows and James Gilbert. Whose Fair? Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 232 pp. ISBN: 9780226293103 (cloth), $35.00. Whose Fair? Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition James Gilbert BOOK REVIEW 76 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY amusement parks. He also points out that published attendance figures, often cited by fair historians as evidence of an exposition’s importance, routinely exaggerate the actual number of individuals who visited the fair by failing to account for repeat visits by the same person (a season ticket-holder, for example) or the free entry given employees, concessionaires , journalists, and special guests. Gilbert also takes issue with some of the ideas of Robert Rydell, whose ground-breaking work opened the field of world’s fair studies in the 1980s. Rydell argued that the expositions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were events of great significance , where millions of fairgoers had their racist and imperialist opinions confirmed by the anthropological exhibits they saw. While Gilbert does not reject Rydell’s analysis completely , he questions whether those fairgoers actually saw the exhibits in the same light as their creators intended (and as Rydell suggests they did). Gilbert uses evidence contained in diaries and letters of visitors, as well as interviews of visitors completed in the late 1970s, a project carried out in connection with the seventy -fifth anniversary of the fair. For the most part, diary writers and interviewees recalled the midway attractions, the food, and the great size of the exposition, but they seldom, if ever, mentioned the racial or imperialist themes that Rydell stresses. Both the diarists and the interviewees were quite young when they attended the fair (few interviewees could have been more than teenagers), and were likely not as interested in such weighty topics as their elders. For the interviewees, it may also reflect the selective nature of long-term memory. Gilbert also turns to the photographic record of the fair, and in particular to one photograph (used on the book’s dust jacket) that shows a well-dressed female visitor dancing the then popular cake-walk with a broadly smiling and loincloth-wearing...