Word: pavilions
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...better shows in the central pavilion also take up the theme of technology, science and art. "The Representation of Space" has some painstaking reconstructions of spatial illusion in Renaissance and baroque art; its best moment (which will be the envy of all red-blooded interior decorators) is a full-size wooden replica of Borromini's false-perspective colonnade, made in the 17th century for the Palazzo Spada in Rome. The second exhibition, "Wunderkammer," is a delight. Wunderkammern--literally, chambers of astonishment--were an embellishment of European collections from the 16th century onward. They were anthologies of real and artificial oddities...
...visitors behave here, even when waiting in line 45 min. for a Frontierland hot dog. All the employees smile, even the teenagers in French Foreign Legion uniforms sweeping up cigarette butts in front of the imitation- Aztec Mexican pavilion. (Average "life-span" of a piece of street trash before being removed: 4 min.) During the Magic Kingdom's afternoon parade of Disney characters, a sanitation man in old-fashioned vest and black pants materializes to scoop up some horse dung. When the crowd cheers him, he doffs his hat and salutes...
China's looks like a discount warehouse, complete with piles of rugs and gewgaws. Inside the Soviet Union's pavilion, there are models of satellites and space stations, a huge pond on which a few little ships make desultory voyages, and a large relief map of the U.S.S.R., with lights pinpointing major cities and prompting a sense of unfortunate irony. In each group there is almost always some black humorist who asks, "Is Chernobyl the one that's glowing brightest?" The American pavilion, dedicated at the last moment to the seven astronauts killed in the Challenger disaster, deals exclusively with...
Serendipity may prove the best guide, for much of the pleasure of Expo 86 can be found in less expected places and in the more unsophisticated exhibits. The Thai pavilion, for example, contains the throne, 150 years old and encrusted with gold leaf, on which the Siamese King rode his elephant into battle. When the fighting became fierce, explains a helpful sign, the King would leap onto poor Dumbo's neck, the better to spear the enemy. If Hannibal had been so athletic, Carthage might never have fallen. The Singapore exhibit has a replica of a local market, right down...
Realizing that Canadians are sometimes thought to lack a sense of humor, the Expo planners have tried to counter that dour image by deploying strolling performers, robot minstrels and pockets of whimsy. "We wanted to be sure that people were entertained," says Jim Patterson, spokesman for the Canada pavilion. On a nice day there are almost certain to be gobs of children cavorting in a playground sea of plastic orange balls or in UFO H20, a humorous collection of splashing fountains made to look like alien space objects. The Land Plaza, with everything from a Singapore trishaw and a Philippine...