The 1893 World Exposition: A Contest of Cultures
Highbrow or lowbrow? James Gilbert looks at the competing visions of American civilisation on offer at Chicago's fin de siécle Exposition of 1893.
Few events in American history were more self-consciously styled to define the state of American civilisation than the Columbian World's Exposition held at Chicago in 1893. Its symbolism was heavy, didactic and obvious. The Fair directors sought to construct every element of the Fair to demonstrate the march of Western civilisation through the United States to Chicago. In summing up this evolution, the metaphor of high culture provided the link, the symbolic language that asserted the combined superiority of European art and architecture and American Victorian moral sensibilities.
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