A Fair to Remember

“I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE,” proclaims a pin in the permanent collection of the Queens Museum, designed by Norman Bel Geddes for General Motors’ Futurama Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair. At once endearing and eerie, the hubris of this tiny item evokes a colossal irony—especially in these grim times—a feeling heightened downstairs in A Billion Dollar Dream, an exhibition about the subsequent 1964 World’s Fair that offers a critical reinterpretation of the event and its checkered legacy. Eschewing (for the most part) MCM nostalgia, the collection of pamphlets, photographs, maps, and souvenirs is divided into five sections: Gender, Labor, Car Culture, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and “Peace Through Understanding.” The last was the fair’s official theme, symbolized by the Unisphere outside. Before descending the museum’s spiral staircase to the exhibition, I was greeted by the disembodied voice of Robert Moses, proclaiming his intent to bring visitors “together in our shrinking globe.” The nearby introductory text refutes Moses’s myopic ambition, explaining tha…