Urso Chappell was a passionate, lifelong world expo aficionado and advocate. He attended as many expos during his lifetime as he could, often spending weeks and months at each one. For his master's degree in Visual Brand Design from the Domus Academy in Milan, Italy, Chappell did an internship at the World Expo 2015 there and came up with the idea of collecting people's motivations, impressions and memories around each expo souvenir they acquired. This collection was then collated and sent to the Special Collections Research Center at Fresno State as part of the Donald G. Larson Collection on International Expositions and Fairs.
A talented graphic designer, Chappell's logo for Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan was chosen to be featured on one of the expo trains. He also founded Expomuseum.com, a well-known and respected website devoted to all things expo-related. Chappell did countless podcasts with leading expo people from around the world and amassed an incomparable collection documenting modern expos from the 1980s to the 2000s. The Special Collections Research Center is proud to preserve Chappell's unparalleled collection and make it available for research, just as he wanted. We are grateful to Chappell's family, in particular, his father, Don Chappell and his best friend, Greg Humphrey, for ensuring that Chappell's legacy will live on through his collection.
