Spain and America have long used international exhibitions to create, promote, modify, and contest national identity. In this book, M. Elizabeth Boone investigates a series of Spanish exhibitions, with particular emphasis on the 1876, 1893, and 1915 expositions in the United States, the 1888 and 1889 fairs in Barcelona and Paris, and the 1910 celebrations of independence in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Santiago de Chile. Studying the paintings, ephemeral architectural spaces, and manifold manifestations of visual culture, Boone brings attention to the rich and understudied history of Spanish artistic production in the trans-Atlantic world. At the same time, she uncovers the “Spanishness” of U.S. national identity and explores the means by which Americans from Santiago de Chile to Chicago or San Diego, California, used exhibitions of Spanish art and history to mold their own modern self-image.

M. Elizabeth Boone is Professor of the History of Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Alberta in Canada. She specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art in the United States, Spain, and Latin America and has recently turned her attention to the exhibition of animals at fairs and expositions in Europe and America.

“Professor Boone has written an entertaining and well-structured book pivoted around World Fairs carefully chosen to identify historical moments, when the origin of North America became Plymouth Rock rather than Florida, New Mexico, or any other part of the United States with Spanish roots”, Sarah Symmons, Hispanic Research Journal

“No sólo la distorsión de la herencia española en los EEUU, sino también las aún mayores distorsiones que conllevaba la aceptación de esta herencia se examinan con la perspicacia que hace que este libro sea de lectura obligatoria para comprender tanto el complicado mundo de las exposiciones universales como también los problemas que todavía sacuden el debate político y cultural en España y en los EEUU”, Eugenia Afinoguénova, Cuadernos de Arte de la Universidad de Granada

“Un completo y profundo relato sobre las exposiciones y lo es, precisamente, por cómo M. Elizabeth Boone consigue transmitir, no solo cómo se organizaron, los pabellones construidos o los elementos expuestos, sino también cómo se fueron construyendo las identidades nacionales, que en realidad son múltiples, complejas y contradictorias, en el contexto de esos eventos”, Victoria Sánchez Mellado, Atrio

“Un estudio que amplía y actualiza los estudios en habla inglesa sobre España y las artes en el siglo XIX a través de una concienzuda búsqueda de fuentes de muy variada naturaleza”, Pablo Sánchez Izquierdo, Camino Real

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“[This book] illuminates American ideological objectives in the representation of national pasts through international and commemorative fairs and, perhaps more importantly, invites us to be alert to other ways and moments in which the United States shares a history and aesthetics with Spanish and Latinx cultures”, Alisa Luxenberg, Bulletin of the Comediantes

“Special attention is devoted to Spanish art in the 19th century—presented through remarkable plates and photographs—including paintings, architectural displays, and rare materials”, N. Greene, Choice

“Boone confirms her role as the leading interpreter of the complex interactions between the United States and Spain as revealed in the visual arts. This thoroughly researched analysis of key international expositions held between 1876 and 1915 demonstrates the nuances of these trans-Atlantic relations and provides insight into Hispanic/Latinx identity and presence in the United States over a century later”, Katherine Manthorne, editor of California Mexicana: Missions to Murals, 1820-1930

“Pioneering in every respect, this handsomely-illustrated volume offers unique insights into the extent to which political circumstances, combined with long-standing racial and religious prejudices, frustrated Spain’s campaign for recognition of the artistic and creative genius of its people at various world’s fairs. The volume is a must for anyone interested in Spain’s modern history along with those concerned with attitudes towards the place of both Spanish and Hispanic culture in the United States”, Richard L. Kagan, author of Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493-1793

“A meticulously researched and engagingly written account of the genesis, the promotion, and also the avoidance of Spanish identity and culture, including in Spain’s former colonies. This impressive book is a major contribution to transnational cultural studies, demonstrating Boone’s deep and nuanced command of Spanish, Latin American, and U.S. art and culture”, Barbara Brinson Curiel, Humboldt State University

“It mines a wealth of visual and textual evidence from the later 19th and early 20th century world’s fairs in order to convincingly demonstrate Spain’s marginalization in the construction of an American identity that leaned more heavily toward England. While well-versed in theoretical approaches to its subject and detailed in unraveling the complexities of Spain’s reception at world’s fairs, Boone’s book remains grounded in a careful examination of the fine arts and material culture, and how the visual arts functioned politically in an international context”, David Raizman, coeditor of Expanding Nationalisms at World Fairs: Identity, Diversity and Exchange, 1851-1915

“A wonderfully detailed investigation of the shaping of Spain’s national-ethnic identity through several key international exhibitions with art in the United States and Latin America. Drawing upon unpublished archival sources, the engaging study analyzes the strategies of, and the international stakes for administrators, statespersons, and critics from different nations. This book offers readers an indispensable understanding of the politics of display in the creation and reception of these exhibitions”, Oscar E. Vázquez, author of The End Again: Degeneration and Visual Culture in Modern Spain

“This book is groundbreaking and an important tool in helping us all get a richer, more complete, and much more realistic view of the Spanish past and contributions to making the United States what it was to become”, David M. Sokol, Journal of American Culture

“This book offers the interested reader an excellent gateway to think visual cultures in dialogue with the objective of the nations at the time of the composition of collections that synthesized national imageries and, at the same time, to discover which elements were included and excluded in the consolidation of those canons. From my perspective, it is, in turn, a contribution to think the construction of national patrimony in a way that is more dynamic and attentive to quite different elements and actors”, Paula Bruno, Tapuya

“A welcome contribution during an important historical moment, when the US relationship to its Hispanic heritage and present-day culture is being reconfigured. July 29, 2020, marked the establishment of the National Museum of the American Latino with the approval of the US Congress, as part of the omnibus spending bill. Drawing on the visual culture of the nineteenth-century World’s Fairs, Boone’s book puts in perspective the historical origins of the tension between the US and its Spanish roots”, Maria Dorofeeva, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide

“A must-read revisionist project of great urgency for Americanists, Latin Americanists, and Iberianists who wish to better understand the interconnectedness of their cultural histories and to shape more inclusive scholarship”, Alba Campo Rosillo, Winterthur Portfolio

“An informative work and a mustread for individuals interested in art history, world’s fairs, immigration to the United States, and US-Spanish-Latin American relations at the turn of the twentieth century”, Gregg French, RACAR: Canadian Art Review