Talk:List of American painters exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition

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Comment[edit]

… is a joy forever. Carptrash (talk) 22:39, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The White City[edit]

The twelve main buildings of the World Columbian Exposition were iron-framed, but clad in wood lath faced with staff, a plaster-like temporary building material. The effect was of a Beaux-Arts white city, built at a tiny fraction of the cost of marble. Louis Sullivan was architect of the polychromatic Transportation Building, the only non-white main building in "The White City." He later warned: "The damage of the World's Fair [to American architecture] will last for half a century from its date, if not longer. It has penetrated deep into the constitution of the American mind, effecting there lesions significant of dementia."[1]

African Americans were "vastly underrepresented in the exhibits" in the main buildings, and were excluded from exhibiting in many of the individual state buildings. New York's building was an exception, although artworks and handicrafts by blacks were exhibited in a separate "Afro-American" section. Sculptor Edmonia Lewis chose to exhibit her works in the Woman's Building, as did other black women. "One prominent opponent [of the Exposition] was Ida B. Wells, who, after waging an anti-lynching campaign in the South, moved to Chicago in 1893. For Wells, the final straw came when, as a sop to blacks (but also as an attendance booster), fair officials scheduled a Colored People's Day, promising 2,000 free watermelons."[2] Frederick Douglass, in a speech given in front of the Haiti Building, noted: "Although there are 8 millions of men of African descent in this country, not one of them seems to have been worthy of a place on the platform of the inaugural ceremonies."[3]

In 1993, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery commemorated the centennary of the exposition by gathering 100 paintings and sculptures by American artists that had been exhibited there.[4] A critic reviewing "Revisting the White City" noted the exclusion of black artists in 1893, and found only one black face—an urchin in a J. G. Brown genre painting—in the exhibition.[5]

  1. ^ Louis Sullivan, The Autobiography of an Idea (1922), p. 325.[1]
  2. ^ Patrick T. Reardon, "The World's Columbian Exposition at the 'White City'," The Chicago Tribune, July 17, 2008.[2]
  3. ^ Frederick Douglass Speech in Chicago, from Webster.edu.
  4. ^ Carolyn K. Carr, et al., Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World's Fair (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
  5. ^ Sarah Booth Conroy, "Beauties and Biases," The Washington Post, April 17, 1993.[3]
Is your thought that there should be an article The White City or that this paragraph should be a part of this article? Carptrash (talk) 19:21, 4 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Carptrash: My question is: If the above comments are tangential to the article/list about the paintings, are they appropriate for this Talk page? == BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 23:45, 4 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Carptrash: I added much of the above to the article's lede. But I'm not sure how well it fits. == BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 00:15, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@BoringHistoryGuy: Well is is fine on the talk page, I am not a big fan of a lot of chatter on lists. Have you seen the Punch (I think) cartoon about Negro Day at the Fair? I stashed it somewhere and I think it should be included wherever you post your thoughts. Carptrash (talk) 00:37, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Carptrash: Yeah, I've seen it. Although I don't remember where. == BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 00:46, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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