After the end of World War II, museum and gallery exhibitions, industrial and trade fairs, biennials, triennials, festivals and world's fairs all came increasingly to be used as locations for the exercise of 'soft power', for displays of cultural diplomacy between nations and as spaces for addressing areas of social and political contestation. This book reflects on approaches to the study of exhibitions within and beyond the disciplinary boundaries of art and design history. It also explores the wider networks and relationships that are engendered through exhibitions.

Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries traces relations across a wide set of geographies: Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific and the USA. It draws on a range of methodologies and interdisciplinary perspectives principally from art and design history but also from social, economic and political history and museum studies. Featured case studies include explorations of the life and work of Misha Black, Belgo-American exchanges during the Cold War, Israel's appearance at the 1948-1952 Venice Biennale and the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair. This book's impressively global scope is in line with its outward-looking subject matter and its international line up of contributors further underlines this.

Harriet Atkinson is a historian of design and culture and Researcher at the Centre for Design History at the University of Brighton, UK. She is currently Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project, 'The Materialization of Persuasion: Modernist Exhibitions in Britain for Propaganda and Resistance, 1933 to 1953' and has written extensively on the history and theory of exhibitions. She is the author of Festival of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2012) and co-editor, with Jeremy Aynsley, of The Banham Lectures (Bloomsbury, 2009).

Verity Clarkson is a design historian and Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research explores post-war visual and material culture, investigating transnational connections between arts organizations, government bodies and audiences with a particular focus on the organization and reception of exhibitions. She has published on post-1945 exhibitions, trade fairs and art historiography in the context of British Cold War cultural diplomacy.

Sarah A. Lichtman is Assistant Professor of Design History at Parsons School of Design, The New School, USA, where she directs the Master of Arts program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies, offered in affiliation with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, USA. She is co-editor, with Pat Kirkham, of Screen Interiors (Bloomsbury, 2021) and has published widely on design and gender. Lichtman is currently Managing Editor of the Journal of Design History.