Hillary Clinton wants your money (for the US pavilion)

The Pavilion suffers from the fact that because the Bush and now Obama Administrations chose to rely on private donors to support the US Pavilion, rather than funding it directly as has always been customary, the fundraisers must twist and turn to appeal to the likely sponsors.

The US Pavilion appears to be a food court because it _is_ a food court. One of the US Pavilion's biggest initial sponsors was Yum!, a giant fast-food and restaurant concern that owns, among other properties, KFC -- Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's claimed that Yum! China is bigger than McDonald's in China. The prime location of the US Pavilion, at the crossroads to entrances and top attractions, and directly across from the must-see China Pavilion will create great visitor "throughput." It has been alleged that this is the principal reason for Yum!'s and other food and soda-pop vendors' involvement, the main source of investments so far (it seems: there has been no public audit so far.)

The US Pavilion contains a bump-and-grind theater -- its seats move along with the visuals -- showing feel-good fantasies about a better future rather than dealing with actual issues that concern American and Chinese citizens and people around the world: climate change, financial stability, good lives for the Earth's's children, balanced ecologies, alternative energy, a peaceful world, etc. These topics aren't a good backdrop to the consumption of chicken nuggets.

The same is true for the other sponsors. They aren't in it for patriotism alone. Each expects ROI from investments in the US Pavilion, financial, political, or both. Thus the US Pavilion operators couldn't express a genuine _American_ point of view even if they wanted to. From the beginning, however, they favored a corporate showcase.

After all, the US Pavilion operation is a corporation, too. It's a nonprofit corporation -- there is no profit and there are no shareholders. However, according to the IRS when queried earlier this year, it's also _not_ tax-exempt -- that is, it's not a charity). Combine "nonprofit" with "not a charity" and you wind up with a company where the owners keep all of the revenues minus expenses and taxes. They and the suppliers get paid up front. If there's a shortfall, they can always go to Congress and ask for an appropriation to cover the difference.

(They say in public that they can't go to Congress, perhaps to win over new sponsors, but that's not what the law says. At any time Congress can appropriate funds for the US participation in Shanghai. No one has asked so far, that's all.)

As Adam Minter commented yesterday on his _Shanghai Scrap_ blog, the physical design of the US Pavilion is dull and uninspiring. Its facade is no longer the extravagant theater marquee proposed by the team's former architect, a Canadian. Instead it's a cookie-cutter pile of geometries that resembles the design provided to the US Pavilion operators by a Shanghai design institute in late 2008.

According to a story making the rounds in Shanghai and in piecemail press accounts, when the current operators resigned the US Pavilion job in October 2008, citing difficulty raising private funds, the Shanghai Consulate, with money from Chinese sources, resurrected the team and provided them with access to a Shanghai design institute. The design institute produced an architecture that was more economical -- and also generic and boring -- in keeping with the lowered fundraising goals dictated by the Consulate team. So the story goes.

If the story's true, and not just a rumor circulating among American expats in Shanghai, why would anyone expect a Shanghai design institute to successfully express American sensibilities and style any better than a US architect could envision a China Pavilion as powerful as the one that anchors the Expo today? It couldn't and didn't.

Over the course of the last 18 months, the US Pavilion, once a noble vision, has become much less about the American people's sentiments, hopes, and aspirations and much more about cutting corners, corporate themes, and trading favors.

This progression may have resulted in part from the operators' reasonable desire to do well personally. Ultimately, however, it is the Bush and Obama Administrations that are responsible. Not having the foresight or courage to seek public funding for a US Pavilion, they mandated today's financial dependency and the US Pavilion's resulting attributes: commercialism and mediocrity.

It's ironic that Secretary Clinton, who on assuming her post 10 months ago could have asked Congress to fund the US Pavilion for the entire $60mm -- about 1/7 the cost to the US of a day in Iraq or 1/3 of a day in Afghanistan -- and averted the current embarrassment, is still hawking private funders. A Global Partnership Initiative has been created within the State Department to do the same for other projects. Not just the US Pavilion in Shanghai but US public diplomacy worldwide is on the auction block.

Sand vball pits, some bocce courts, some cornhole boards, a pick up flag football game, gas BBQs and cold beer as far as the eye can see with various stereos blasting The Fray, Goo Goo Dolls, Kanye, Beyonce and Shakira while Americans run around in bikinis and sufer shorts.

Maybe some ultimate b as well. A very low cost and accurate representation of the US in the summer.