Washington Museum Association Conference
The Washington Museum Association brings their 2012 conference to Seattle Center. The annual conference of museum professionals will focus their annual meeting on The Next Fifty: Innovation, Inspiration and Sustained Futures for Museums.
June 13-15, 2012
The 2012 Pacific Northwest Historians Guild Conference will bring together historians of all types to present research in a moderated forum setting. Presenters will be grouped into panels that will consider a particular aspect of the Seattle’s World’s Fair.
May 11 -12, 2012
Buy History Today!
The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and Its Legacy is a new book about the history of the 1962 World’s Fair and Seattle Center. Developed in partnership with HistoryLink.org and written by Paula Becker and Alan J. Stein, this 300-page, image rich hardcover book will be released October 21, 2011.
Astronauts and space craft. Royalty and Cold War tension. Science and art. The Kennedys. Religion and sex. Fashion and futurist speculation. The Canadian Tattoo. Freakish weather and Belgian waffles. Elvis and his excitable fans. The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair had it all.
Officially named Century 21 Exposition, the fair drew 10 million visitors and even made a little money — remarkable success for an event staged in a little-known, geographically isolated city. But behind the commerce and entertainment was a larger vision. The civic leaders, businessmen, and publicists who made the fair a success were determined that when the lights went out and the tourists went home Seattle would be left with much-needed civic center. In the half-century since the fair, Seattle Center has become the artistic and cultural hub of the region — the remarkable legacy of a fondly remembered six months of fun long ago.
Order today >
Developed with HistoryLink and KCTS 9, this new curriculum module is available online for all WA state 6th grade history classes in 2012 and educators far and wide.
See the curriculum here >
Do you have a photograph, collectible, brochure, or some other piece of history from the Seattle World’s Fair which you’d like to donate to posterity? Seattle Center Foundation has partnered with the leading historical organizations in our region to gather and preserve memorabilia from the Century 21 Exposition. If you have an item you’d like to donate, download the Donation Form, and send it in. We’ll put you in touch with the proper institution to process your gift.
Were you or someone you know at the 1962 World’s Fair? Do you have stories, photos, or video you’d like to share? Help create a collective community memory of this momentous event in our region’s history. Then find out where your stories intersect with others.
Seattle Center has partnered with Intersect and KCTS9 on an exciting new online social experience to collect our community’s stories from the Century 21 Exposition.
The centerpiece of KCTS 9’s INVENTING THE FUTURE, a multiplatform World’s Fair initiative, is a one-hour documentary by filmmaker John Gordon Hill. When Seattle Invented the Future: the 1962 World’s Fair tells the story of how World’s Fair planners first conceived the Century 21 Exposition as a promotional stunt to put Seattle on the map. Instead, they were swept up in a national initiative to strengthen science education and wound up shaping the future of a city. The documentary will premiere on KCTS 9 in February 2012, with multiple airings in the Seattle market over several months. The documentary will also be distributed to public television stations around the nation.
Visit the KCTS 9 website >
The Museum of History & Industry and Seattle Center Foundation are working together to create an onsite exhibit featuring artifacts and memorabilia from the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair as well as hosting a traveling exhibit on the history of all world’s fairs.
