This paper focuses on a pivotal moment of cross-cultural exchange: the 1939/1940 New York World’s Fair, where American organizers invited Middle Easterners to curate presentations of their own societies for consumption by American audiences. This gesture represented a break in the pattern of ignoring Middle Eastern curation in favor of Western planners and their Orientalist fantasies about the region. Indeed, the directors of the New York World’s Fair were eager to engage Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, Turks, and others from the Middle East to present their own national narratives for the entertainment consumption of Americans. These pavilions were highly successful, and Middle Eastern curators and American officials of the Fair felt optimistic about future relations among their nations. However, this was not realized without some controversy and contest. Patrons of the Fair enjoyed presentations of the Middle East curated exclusively by representatives of Middle Eastern lands, with one exception: British Palestine. The World’s Fair committee failed to convince the British colonial state to curate a Palestine exhibit, so, in its place, American supporters of Zionism created a Palestine pavilion that was exclusively focused on the Zionist colonial project in the British Mandate colony. This resulted in tremendous tension between the organizers of the Fair and those of the Palestine exhibit, as well as between advocates of the Palestinian Arab national cause and the organizers of the Fair, the British government and the organizers of the Fair, and anti-Zionist Jewish groups in the USA and the organizers of the pro-Zionist pavilion. By exploring this case, I argue that shifting political realities—the portent of empire’s decline and the promise of national sovereignty in the Middle East—opened up a door for a more mutual conversation about how to represent the Middle East to Western audiences in which Middle Easterners were key players. At the same time, the controversy surrounding Zionism and the hijacking by Zionists of the Palestine exhibition provided new avenues for contention about such representations—including a near-total silencing of Palestinian Arab voices, just at a time when American cultural impresarios were opening up to the notion that Arabs had a right to present their national narratives in public entertainment venues like World's Fairs. Sources for this paper include unpublished archival records, newspaper and newsreel reportage, and both written and visual ephemera from the Fair.