The Great Exhibition of 1851 was chiefly and proudly instigated by The Society of Arts.

Held in Hyde Park, London, in its famous Crystal Palace, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, to give it its full name, attracted six million visitors and has been emulated many times since. The world fairs of today number the Great Exhibition as their first.

The Great Exhibition was intended as an engine of improvement; a direct way to actually encourage invention rather than just celebrate it, to raise the standards of consumers, and to lower trade barriers.

From the perspective of the people who sent in exhibits — manufacturers, artists, merchants, scientists, engineers, and more — the international exhibitions were a direct inducement to improvement. The people who submitted inferior exhibits could directly see, all in one place, the things they needed to do to catch up. It gave the laggards the information they needed to emulate their peers, and perhaps even to exceed them the next time.

From the perspective of the visitors, too, the exhibitions raised their standards as consumers. It exposed them to the latest products, allowing them to see the best of design by directly comparing the exhibits. Consumers got a chance to compare the products on offer both at home and abroad, and thereby clamoured for new imports and lower tariffs on them, while forcing domestic producers to improve their quality to compete. And by bringing so many people from all over the world together, the exhibitions laid the groundwork for major free trade deals, international treaties on postage and telegraph rates, and the democratisation of passports beyond just those considered “respectable”.

Society kick starts the Great Exhibition

The Society of Arts piloted small industrial exhibitions in the late 1840s, and first put the Great Exhibition of 1851 into motion, forming an executive committee, and contracting with a firm for up-front funding and the building in exchange for a share of the ticket sales. Having laid this initial groundwork, our then president Prince Albert helped set up a Royal Commission to provide apolitical leadership. Although this ended our official involvement as a corporate body, our members continued to be involved, especially as part of the Royal Commission’s executive committee.

The massive success of the Great Exhibition of 1851 directly led to the creation of the hub of cultural and educational institutions at South Kensington, including what is now the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Royal Albert Hall. There then followed a long period of collaboration with many of these institutions over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

We also organised the second exhibition in London in 1862 (its building was recycled a few years later to create Alexandra Palace), and a series of exhibitions to fulfil the same role in 1871-74. We were also involved in subsequent exhibitions abroad, hosting the London office for Dublin’s 1853 exhibition, helping with the British section at the 1855 Paris exhibition, and our secretary - Henry Trueman Wood - organising the British section at the Paris exhibition of 1889. The whole Council of the Society of Arts appointed the Royal Commissioners to manage the British section of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.