The role of World Exhibitions in the 19th and early 20th centuries was to confirm a relation between the nation state and modernity. As a display about industries, inventions and identities, the Exhibition, in a sense, put entire nations into an elevated, viewable space. It is a significant element in modernity as comparisons can be made, progress is assumed and the future can be made manageable. The Exhibition links the national and local, with the international and global. Nationalism and internationalism are in tension in the space, and so is the relation between government, business and media.

The educational dimension of Exhibitions is an area of research rich in possibilities for historians of education. It is a dimension of comparative education which illuminates classifications and genealogies, networks and audiences, cross border industries of education, and the factors which shape discursive and technical exchanges. Displays of education objects can be read as demonstrations of modernity in education and schooling. They were catalogues of the future.