Cymbala


Vol 3, No 1 (2014)   |   ISSN 2155-1162 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/contemp.2014.116 
http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu 

 

Editorial Notes: 
Exhibition Complex: Displaying People, Identity, and 

Culture 

Amy Cymbala 

 

 

 This issue of Contemporaneity features two selected papers and the keynote address 
from the symposium Exhibition Complex: Displaying People, Identity, and Culture held 
October 18-20, 2012 at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The 
symposium was organized by graduate students from the Department of the History of Art 
and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh in collaboration with the Carnegie Museum of 
Art, whose exhibition, Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World's Fairs, 
1851-1939, inspired the symposium’s topic. The symposium aimed to analyze modes of 
display, types of artistic production, and the structures that constitute ephemeral exhibition 
spaces. The papers presented covered a range of periods and topics, from World’s Fairs to 
contemporary Chinese monuments, but all argued that these ephemeral exhibitions continue 
to impact us long after the display has ended. A special thanks to all our presenters, our 
authors Diane Greenwold, and Winnie Tsang, and especially our distinguished keynote 
speaker Dr. Saloni Mathur, Associate Professor of Art History at UCLA, for all their 
contributions to our symposium and journal.  

 

 

More information on the graduate symposium, including paper abstracts, can be 
found by visiting http://haagradsymposium.pitt.edu/Welcome.html.



 

 

Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture   http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu 
Vol 3, No 1 (2014)   |   ISSN 2155-1162 (online)   |   DOI 10.5195/contemp.2014.116 

 

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 
United States License. 

 

 

 

This journal is operated by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its 
D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, and is co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.