World's fair

World exhibitions are places of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish. ... World exhibitions glorify the exchange value of the commodity. They create a framework in which its use value becomes secondary. They are a school in which the masses, forcibly excluded from consumption, are imbued with the exchange value of commodities to the point of identifying with it. ~ Walter Benjamin

A world's fair, world fair, world exposition or universal exposition (sometimes expo or Expo for short) is a large public exhibition.

Quotes

• The folly and absurdity of the Queen in allowing this trumpery must strike every sensible and well-thinking mind, and I am astonished the ministers themselves do not insist on her at least going to Osborne during the Exhibition, as no human being can possibly answer for what may occur on the occasion. The idea ... must shock every honest and well-meaning Englishman. But it seems everything is conspiring to lower us in the eyes of Europe
  • King Ernest Augustus I of Hanover, Van der Kiste 2004, pp. 206–207. ^{[citation needed]}

• World exhibitions are places of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish. ... World exhibitions glorify the exchange value of the commodity. They create a framework in which its use value becomes secondary. They are a school in which the masses, forcibly excluded from consumption, are imbued with the exchange value of commodities to the point of identifying with it.
  • Walter Benjamin, "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century", Arcades Project (Harvard University Press: 2002), pp. 17-18