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Past Events
Book Presentation
Decentering World’s Fairs:
Transcultural Perspectives on Art, Fashion, and Latin America (2025)
Edited by Alexandra Karentzos / Miriam Oesterreich / Elena Nustrini / Lizzy Rys
May 27, 2026 | 5pm CEST / 11am EDT
How are the histories of art and fashion connected in the global context of world’s fairs? The contributors to this volume analyze the changing roles assumed by the arts, visual media, handicrafts, and artifacts and investigate the unifying conceptions of the ›Gesamtkunstwerk‹ in the framework of national representations at world’s fairs. They reflect the ambivalent status of Latin American re-/presentations and the artistic and curatorial strategies employed by representatives of (post)colonial or ›peripheral‹ states. By focusing on transcultural style migrations and aesthetic discourses in a globalized art world, the volume provides a re-vision of international exhibitions and world’s fairs from the perspective of a critical art history.​
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Order the book:
Europe: Transcript Publishing
U.S.: Available via Columbia University Press
About the Editors
Alexandra Karentzos (Prof. Dr.) is an art historian and professor of fashion and aesthetics at Technische Universität Darmstadt. Her research focuses in particular on fashion, art, and globalization from a postcolonial, transcultural perspective. She has been co-Principal Investigator of the DFG research project “A Critical Art History of International and World Expositions – Decentering Fashion and Modernities.”
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Miriam Oesterreich (Prof. Dr.) is an art historian and professor of design theory at Universität der Künste Berlin. Her research focuses on Latin American art history from the 19th century to the present, critical heritage studies, exhibition histories, and transculturation processes in design, fashion, and art. She has been co-Principal Investigator of the DFG research project “A Critical Art History of International and World Expositions – Decentering Fashion and Modernities.”
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Elena Nustrini (M.A.) is an art historian and doctoral candidate at Universität der Künste Berlin.
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Lizzy Rys (M.A.) is an art and fashion historian and doctoral candidate at Technische Universität Darmstadt and the Ghent University.
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