The Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life) was held from 25 May to 25 November 1937 in Paris, France. Both the Palais de Chaillot, housing the Musée de l'Homme, and the Palais de Tokyo, which houses the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, were created for this exhibition that was officially sanctioned by the Bureau International des Expositions. A third building, , housing the permanent Museum of Public Works, which was originally to be among the new museums created on the hill of Chaillot on the occasion of the Exhibition, was not built until January 1937 and inaugurated in March 1939.

Exhibitions

At first the centerpiece of the exposition was to be a tower ("Phare du Monde") which was to have a spiraling road to a parking garage located at the top and a hotel and restaurant located above that. The idea was abandoned as it was far too expensive.

thumb|300px|left|Map of the exhibition

Pavilions

Finnish Pavilion

The Finnish pavilion was designed by Alvar Aalto, following an open architectural competition held in 1936, where he had won both first and second prize, the winning entry "Le bois est en marche" forming the basis for the pavilion as built. Finland had been given a difficult, sloping wooded site near the Trocadéro, something which Aalto was able to exploit in creating a ground plan featuring an irregular chain of volumes joined in a sort of collage - with small, open, cubic pavilions together with two larger exhibition halls. The entire complex curved around a shady garden with Japanese touches. The pavilion was also an advertisement for Finland's prime export, wood, as the building was built entirely of timber. French architecture historian Fabienne Chevallier has argued that at the time French critics were baffled by Aalto's building because though it was built of wood – and thus endorsing an image of what they perceived Finland to be – they were unprepared for Aalto's avant-gardism.

Canadian Pavilion

Canada had initially not planned to take part in the exposition because of reasons of cost. In February 1936, at a party in Ottawa, Raymond Brugère, the French minister-plenipotentiary pressed the prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and his Quebec lieutenant Ernest Lapointe, about Canada taking part in the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, saying he very much wanted Canada to have a pavilion. King hesitated, saying he did not know if his government could afford the cost of building a pavilion, but Brugère forced his hand by sending a telegram to Paris, saying that Canada would take part, leading to an announcement being made in Paris.

Fitting in the architectural master-plan of the master architect Jacques Gréber at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, and inspired by the shape of a grain elevator, the Canadian pavilion included Joseph-Émile Brunet's 28-foot sculpture of a buffalo (1937), and Charles Comfort's The Romance of Nickel. Paintings by Brunet, sculpted panels on the outside of the structure, and several thematic stands inside the Canadian pavilion depicted aspects of Canadian culture.

Norwegian Pavilion

The Norwegian pavilion was designed by , Arne Korsmo and . It included Hannah Rygen's tapestry Ethiopia.

Spanish Pavilion

The Spanish pavilion was arranged by the President of Spain Spanish Republican government and built by the Spanish architect Josep Lluis Sert. It attracted extra attention because the exposition took place during the Spanish Civil War. The pavilion included Pablo Picasso's Guernica, the now-famous depiction of the horrors of war, as well as Alexander Calder's sculpture Mercury Fountain and Joan Miró's painting Catalan peasant in revolt.

German Pavilion

Two of the other notable pavilions were those of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The organization of the world exhibition had placed the German and the Soviet pavilions directly across from each other. Hitler had desired to withdraw from participation, but his architect Albert Speer convinced him to participate, showing Hitler his plans for the German pavilion. Speer later revealed in his autobiographies that having had a clandestine look at the plans for the Soviet pavilion, he designed the German pavilion to represent a bulwark against Communism.

The preparation and construction of the exhibits were plagued by delay. On the opening day of the exhibition, only the German and the Soviet pavilions had been completed. This, as well as the fact that the two pavilions faced each other, turned the exhibition into a competition between the two great ideological rivals.

Speer's pavilion was culminated by a tall tower crowned with the symbols of the Nazi state: an eagle and the swastika. The pavilion was conceived as a monument to "German pride and achievement". It was to broadcast to the world that a new and powerful Germany had a restored sense of national pride. At night, the pavilion was illuminated by floodlights. Josef Thorak's sculpture Comradeship stood outside the pavilion, depicting two enormous nude males, clasping hands and standing defiantly side by side, in a pose of mutual defense and "racial camaraderie".

British Pavilion

Britain had not been expecting such a competitive exposition, and its planned budget was only a small fraction of Germany's. Frank Pick, the chairman of the Council for Art and Industry, appointed Oliver Hill as architect but told him to avoid modernism and to focus on traditional crafts. The main architectural element of Hill's pavilion was a large white box, decorated externally with a painted frieze by John Skeaping and internally with giant photographic figures which included Neville Chamberlain fishing. Its contents were crafts objects arranged according to English words which had become loanwords in French, such as "sport" and "weekend", and included some items by renowned potter William Worrall. There was considerable British criticism that the result was unrepresentative of Britain and compared poorly to the other pavilions' projections of national strength.

Awards

  • At the presentation, both Speer and Iofan, who also designed the Palace of Soviets that was planned to be constructed in Moscow, were awarded gold medals for their respective designs. Also, for his model of the Nuremberg party rally grounds, the jury granted Speer, to his and Hitler's surprise, a Grand Prix.
  • Artist Johanne deRibert Kajanus, mother of composer Georg Kajanus and film-maker Eva Norvind, granddaughter of composer and conductor Robert Kajanus, and grandmother of actress Nailea Norvind, won a bronze medal for her life-size sculpture of Mother and Child at the exhibition.
  • Polish modern architect Stanisław Brukalski won a bronze medal for his own house, designed together with his wife Barbara Brukalska, built in Warsaw in 1929, likely inspired by Gerrit Rietveld's Schröderhuis which he visited.
  • Polish company, First Factory of Locomotives in Poland Ltd., won a gold medal for the first Polish streamlined steam locomotive Pm36-1 (140 km/h) which arrived in Paris for the expo, another Polish company, Lilpop, Rau i Loewenstein, also won a gold medal for the tourist train (couchette, club carriage and bath/spa carriage). A curious Polish cruise train reserved for skiers included, in addition to the sleeping car, a bar-cinema-dancing car, two bathrooms, a complete installation of showers, a hairdressing salon and even an operating room for urgent intervention.
  • American architect Alden Dow won the "grand prize for residential architecture" for his John S. Whitman House, built in Midland, Michigan, US.
  • Soviet architect Andrey Kryachkov won the Grand Prix for designing his 100-flat building located in Novosibirsk.
  • Soviet-Jewish photographer Max Penson won the photography Grand Prix for his photograph "Uzbek Madonna"
  • Serbian painter Ivan Tabaković won the Grand Prix for ceramics.
  • Lepoglava (Slovenia, Croatia) bobbin lace won a gold medal.