House of European History - Online Collection

    Internationaal Paleis van de Wetenschap 1958
    International Science Palace

    Artist / Maker
    Date
    Publication: 1957 - 1958
    Object Name
    posters
    Inventory Number
    C.2015.094.117
    Physical Description
    Against a black background, a white star shines at the centre of the image. It has five unequal beams and a red ball at its core. The text is also written in white. In the top right-hand corner, there is a white-blue crystal in between two star beams. In the middle, on the right-hand side is the number 58 in green. The poster is in good overall condition, with some small tears on the edges.
    Content Description
    This poster was designed by the Israeli graphic designer Dan Reisinger, then working in Brussels, for the International Science Palace at the Brussels World Fair in 1958. The poster turned the event’s logo into a scientific image. The original logo had an asymmetrical star pointing to the five continents, with the Brussels city hall at its centre and a globe on the right-hand side. The star on this poster is shining, evoking atomic scientific imagery, and the globe has been replaced with a crystal.
    Keywords
    ExhibitionsScienceStars in art
    Exhibition Theme
    3. Rebuilding a divided continent (1945-1970s) -> 3.2. Cold war (not on display)
    Material / Technique
    Color lithograph on paper
    Dimensions
    H x W 90,00 x 60,00 cm
    Place
    Place of origin: BelgiumProduction Place: Belgium
    Curator’s Note
    The first universal exhibition after the Second World War, Expo 58 in Brussels, celebrated the ‘evaluation of the world for a more humane world’. The re-established peace was promoted, even if the traumas of the war were still fresh. Scientific progress was the central theme, as shown through the inaugural speech of Belgian King Baudouin I: ‘More than ever, civilisation appears to be conditioned by science. Forces that no one a quarter of a century ago would have dared to imagine are now available to mankind.’ The King, like many others, still argued that the value of science and technology should depend on how it is used. This was especially true for atomic power, which had had devastating consequences following its use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the recent war. It was therefore civil nuclear power that was given pride of place at Expo 58. As an American newspaper predicted in January 1957: ‘The atomic age is going to have its first world’s fair’. Nuclear power was indeed seen everywhere throughout the fair, from the colonial section, where the focus was on uranium from the (still Belgian) Congo, to the International Science Palace of which ‘the Atom: nuclear physics and atomistics’ was one of the four main parts. Nevertheless, its main symbol was of course the Atomium, the fair’s flagship monument, reproducing an elementary iron crystal enlarged 165 billion times. Four of its nine spheres contained an exhibition on the peaceful applications of nuclear energy, opening with the slogan ‘Atom: Hope’.
    Inscription
    Inscription Position: bottom center INTERNATIONAAL PALEIS VAN DE WETENSCHAP Translation: International Science Palace
    Inscription Position: bottom center ALGEMENE WERELDTENTOONSTELLING BRUSSEL 1958 17 APRIL - 19 OCTOBER Translation: General World Exhibition Brussels 1958 17 April - 19 October
    Signature Position: right top corner Dan Reisinger
    Inscription Position: left bottom corner 'le photographeur Apers' process
    Inscription Position: left bottom corner Printed in Belgium by 'La Dendre' Ninove
    Credit line
    Acquired 2015. EU, EP, House of European History, Brussels.
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