Have you ever heard of the Wolfsonian Collection? To be honest, neither had I until today. And to think, it’s located right here in my back yard.. Miami, Florida.
Actually, Wolfsonian is a part of the Florida International University - It’s a museum located in the heart of historic Miami Beach, within easy walking distance of the world-famous Art Deco hotels.
I was primarily attracted to 
their Worlds Fair and Exhibitions section where they say:
Another central element of the collection is materials produced for or exhibited in world’s fairs and expositions since 1851. The Wolfsonian collection remains unique as an all-inclusive compilation of world’s fair materials, encompassing catalogs and rare books, furnishings, sculpture, paintings, and ephemera (such as scarves, postcards, pamphlets, toys and ashtrays). Imbued with nationalistic implications, these objects stand out as some of the best examples of their kind in the world.
Having originally come from New York, this 1939 Worlds Fair poster caught my eye both for its location, and the design of the poster itself.
Along with that poster, the Wolfsonian also exhibits this vintage post card, also from the 1939 Worlds Fair. It’s described on the site as
The Theme Center was the central display of the Fair. Designed by the architecture firm of Harrison and Fouilhoux, the structure was a symbol not only of the Fair itself, but also of modernism.
Using huge, unadorned geometric forms, the Theme Center dominated the grounds and clearly established the Fair’s overriding message – that a positive future was possible thorough modern technology.
When the design was first presented to the Fair’s president Grover Whalen, he commented: “We promised the world something new in Fair architecture and here it is – something radically different and fundamentally as old as man’s experience…We feel that simplicity must be the keynote of a perfectly ordered mechanical civilization.”
“Simplicity a keynote of perfectly ordered mechanical civilization” … hmmm, let me mull over that a while. In any event, have a click over to the Wolfsonian. If the Worlds Fair’s are not your thing, perhaps something else will catch your eye.
I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.
Tom
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Technorati tags: Bonanzle, Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, Florida International University, Wolfsonian, Worlds Fair
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