Pageant of the Pacific

Pageant of the Pacific

World fairs were also spaces through which to fashion new representations of internationalism. The example here, Plate IV (Economy of the Pacific) taken from the Mexican painter and caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias’s (1904-1957) Pageant of the Pacific, offers a case in point. Covarrubias’ six widely disseminated, illustrated maps of the Pacific basin were made as mural decorations for the Pacific House, the theme building of the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, 1939-40 and stood out as one of the fair’s must see attractions. They were later exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. California-based geographers, such as Carl Sauer, advised Covarrubias on the maps which offered a reoriented conception of internationalism driven by America’s increasingly global role. The murals were informed as much by artistic sentiment as the depiction of geographical features, however, and they derive their value as pictorial guides to the diverse cultures and opportunities of the pacific world.

Miguel Covarrubias / David Rumsey Map Collection, www.davidrumsey.com / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)