City authorities in recent years have competed vigorously to gain the right to host international festivals. In doing so they are heirs to a long tradition, since cities have always served as a natural location for festivals and fairs, providing settings on a scale impossible elsewhere. Cities of Culture examines the role of the Western city as the scene of staged cultural events over the last 150 years. Adopting a lively comparative perspective, it highlights the development of international festivals since London's Great Exhibition of 1851. Making extensive use of case studies and...
City authorities in recent years have competed vigorously to gain the right to host international festivals. In doing so they are heirs to a long trad...
Following on the heels of their very successful Olympic Cities, in this book John and Margaret Gold turn to the experience of cities that stage regular cultural festivals, highlighting the nature and significance of performance, ritual and spectacle in urban life. While the focus is on the period from 1945 to the present, the history of urban cultural festivals from Antiquity to the mid-nineteenth century is included as background to the survey that follows. While cultural festivals have always been an intrinsic part of human society, it is in Europe that many of the high art forms and...
Following on the heels of their very successful Olympic Cities, in this book John and Margaret Gold turn to the experience of cities that stage regula...
