Contemporary Art in the World Fair

In 1958, at the World Fair, the retrospective exhibition 50 Years of Modern Art gathered together the masterpieces of the greatest museums in the world. Fifty years later the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium recalls the great moments of that exhibition by means of documents, records and works of Victor Vasarely, Karel Appel, Asger Jorn,…The World Fair also constituted an « open-air museum » due to the participation of the artists for the decoration of the gardens and pavilions, a trend which is illustrated by the history of Alexander Calder's flagship sculpture, The Whirling Ear, and the panels The Americans produced by Saul Steinberg for the pavilion of the United States.