Thanks for this interesting article. I’m a public historian and work in the fields of historic preservation and environmental/urban history. I was trying to put my finger on exactly why the state fair didn’t “work,” and I believe you’re right in that its complete failure to engage the public (or to even attempt to engage the public) doomed it. The ersatz structures certainly didn’t help!
I grew up in a distant suburb of Chicago, visiting the downtown once or twice a year on family outings or school field trips to the Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum, and taking in the wall of buildings lining Michigan Avenue along Grant Park, which was then bookended by the 49-story Prudential Building to the north and the Doric columns of Soldier's Field on the south. With the urgent lull of the "L" in the background, Chicago felt to me what a city was supposed to be, sturdy, magnificent, melding Classicism and the modern world.
Now the chief landmark of downtown Chicago is a giant stainless steel bean.
I am continually gobsmacked by the so called “professionals” that enable Trump and his worst impulses. From the cheap gold ornamentation plastered all over the Oval Office & outside on that gilded TEMU walkway of whatever the hell that is (Liberace meets Louis XIV meets Saddam Hussein) - how the hell does any licensed / learned designer violate the classical lines of the White House like that? Don’t get me started on the destruction of the East Wing & the Pay To Play Epstein Ballroom.
Trump is treating this country like one of his crummy Atlantic City casinos, and the Freedom 250 abomination on the mall is a perfect illustration of that.
Everything about that event was cheap and faux just like the administration it resembles.
The whole thing was such a waste of our money and a complete fiasco 🙄
Some memorable phrases in this eloquent essay. My favorite: "... its wasp-waisted reinvention of history."
One can be sure that the requisite Drumpf kickbacks (perhaps some additional ones, but mostly to Drumpf) were paid in full.
The idea was doomed from the start because Trump. 'nough said.
The "archtecture" was as ill-conceived, rushed and shallow as the rest of the event. Superficial semblances of design and pomp for a Potemkin event.
Not forgetting the grift and corruption which presumably consumed the funding, as the fair surely didn't.
Thanks for this interesting article. I’m a public historian and work in the fields of historic preservation and environmental/urban history. I was trying to put my finger on exactly why the state fair didn’t “work,” and I believe you’re right in that its complete failure to engage the public (or to even attempt to engage the public) doomed it. The ersatz structures certainly didn’t help!
I would have been disappointed if the fair had not been a cheap, insulting failure like every other product of this odious government.
And stolen to boot.
A typical Trump operation, hijacked, half-assed, and bleed of its assets. Leaves any survivors holding the bag.
I grew up in a distant suburb of Chicago, visiting the downtown once or twice a year on family outings or school field trips to the Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum, and taking in the wall of buildings lining Michigan Avenue along Grant Park, which was then bookended by the 49-story Prudential Building to the north and the Doric columns of Soldier's Field on the south. With the urgent lull of the "L" in the background, Chicago felt to me what a city was supposed to be, sturdy, magnificent, melding Classicism and the modern world.
Now the chief landmark of downtown Chicago is a giant stainless steel bean.
I am continually gobsmacked by the so called “professionals” that enable Trump and his worst impulses. From the cheap gold ornamentation plastered all over the Oval Office & outside on that gilded TEMU walkway of whatever the hell that is (Liberace meets Louis XIV meets Saddam Hussein) - how the hell does any licensed / learned designer violate the classical lines of the White House like that? Don’t get me started on the destruction of the East Wing & the Pay To Play Epstein Ballroom.
Trump is treating this country like one of his crummy Atlantic City casinos, and the Freedom 250 abomination on the mall is a perfect illustration of that.