It Happened Here: Expo '74 Fifty Years After
May 4, 2024-January 26, 2025
In 1974, Spokane hosted a world’s fair - the smallest city ever to do so. During its six-month run, the fair presented exhibits from ten countries, featured a star-studded event calendar, sponsored three environmental symposiums, and attracted nearly 5.6 million visitors. Fifty years later, Expo ’74 remains one of the single most transformative events in Spokane’s history, radically reshaping its natural and built environment. Expo ’74 ushered in a new era for the city - one centered on urban renewal, commercial growth, and political progress.
This 50th anniversary exhibition revisits the historical roots of Expo ‘74’s environmental theme and the community spirit it kindled and features familiar, nostalgic, and lesser-known stories from the MAC’s archives. Highlights include a bejeweled denim costume that Liberace wore for one of his Expo ’74 performances, Sister Paula Turnbull’s model for Spokane’s now-famous Garbage Goat, and an original Sky Ride gondola.
And you can share your own memories of Spokane’s World’s Fair in our Memory Capture Experience. Your personal history will become part of the Expo ’74 Memory Share Collection of the MAC’s Joel E. Ferris Archives. Submit your story when you visit the exhibition or share it now and browse other people's memories, too.
Expo '74: Films from the Vault
Through September 8, 2024
Visitors will get a blast from the past watching recently digitized film footage of Expo '74 from the MAC’s largest archival collection. See President Nixon open the fair, watch the Up with People performers, and more.
Sponsored by
Banner: Expo '74 image: NWC 129 – Dormaier, Jacob #164, Spokane Public Library (Jacob Dormaier Expo '74 Collection)