The exhibitions in history

The Exhibition is a system of exceptional nature that, in building terms, has the duration of “the space of a morning”. In fact it’s about a temporary architecture, usually not subjected to the usual economic evaluations and realize to express in synthetic terms the vitality of an idea. It’s crear that the building mechanism of the expositions results different from the conventional architecture, so that it presents particular “stylistic” and structural features.

The first expositional settlements were meant to be a show, cultural and propagandistic exhibition, but subsequently they would aim more at realizing the most part of the business in the minimum space, in the less time and expense.

Under the architecture profile, in the second half of the XIX century and during the beginning of the XX, the expositional enterprises became soon the symbol of that wide and fast integration of interests, activity and experimentations typical of the contemporary world.

Those installations, organized and realized rapidly, played an important role in making easier the evolution of taste and architectural thought, since they provoked the approach of the public to new building themes and the contact, the comparison and cultural exchange among technicians and artist of different styles.

The specialized exhibitions, the Salons, the Releases, the Commercial Museums, developed at the end of the XIX Century, in parallel with the large Universal Exhibitions, which, however were organized both as sector commercial releases and as means of cultural and political propaganda.
It’s sufficient to recall, as it’s not possible to summarize the contents here, the great expositions that belong to the international civilization history: London 1851, Paris 1855, Kensington 1862, Paris, 1867, Wien 1873, Filadelfia 1876, Paris 1878, 1889, Columbian Expositions (Genoa 1892 – Chicago 1893), Lion 1894, Paris 1900, named “L’Exposition du siècle”. This marked the peak of the great Universal expositions, a result that for enthusiasm, size, public visits and organizational engagement would never be reached again.

Italy didn’t stay out of these events and the series of national expositions, it started in Florence in 1861 and found twenty years a commendable example of organization. The chosen area in the gardens of Piermarini influenced a lot the choices for the exposition in Parma, that will be held in occasion of the Centenario [one hundred years anniversary] Verdiano in 1913 in the shady spaces of Parco Ducale.

Later on there would be many other great expositions in Italy and in the world among which the International Expositions in Rome, in 1911 and in Turin in 1928, that will see the presence of Barilla. Beside these great expositive events, there were other specific releases. We could define them as “minor”, but in any case demonstrative of the evolution of industry and commerce and launched, according to a logic accepted commonly nowadays, towards an increasing “specialization”.