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8 5 4 America’s World’s Fairs, 1893–1915 The eye wanders through the long aisles and over the immense surface of the floor and sees everywhere a picture of peace and plenty. There is a store house of Mother Earth, here she has brought her increase to gladden the eyes and hearts of men; here is spread out in choice variety and endless abundance a feast of the good things of material life. —William E. Cameron, The World’s Fair, Being a Pictorial History of the Columbian Exposition, 1893 In October 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated, one of the newspapers devoted to the Chicago World’s Fair, reported on the exhibits in the Palace of Agriculture, saying that “never before at an exhibition in this or any other country has there been such a widespread [use of the ornamental] work done in grains and grasses.” The writer found it “something really wonderful to those not familiar with the possibilities of such ingredients for decorative purposes” and concluded, “The possibilities of the grains and grasses as materials for decorative purposes seem to be infinite in number. . . . The greatest article for this class of work is corn.”1 Another newspaper, the Daily Inter Ocean, took a more amused tone, calling the cereal architecture and grain art “a new style of architecture” and predicting that it would “cause the festive farmer to open his eyes in astonishment and the dainty art critic to fall in a faint.”2 Despite the claims of a “new style of architecture,” grain-covered exhibits were, of course, not new inventions in 1893. Still, the scale, the elaborateness, and the sheer number of what was presented in Chicago startled the public. Never had this much crop art been brought together all at once, nor had this many people seen it. As well attended as the Sioux City Corn Palaces had been, the displays at the Columbian Exposition surpassed AMERICA’ S WORL D’ S FAIRS, 1893–1915 8 6 them. This chapter explores the history of grain art and butter sculpture at American world’s fairs between 1893 and 1915, first by examining the exhibits and their context and then by analyzing the ideas they represent. The Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 The Chicago fair featured a stunning array of huge exhibition buildings. Drawing on traditions from Greece and Rome, the Renaissance, and the baroque, the classically styled buildings were unified by a standard 30' cornice height and the repetition of columns, domes, pediments, and arches. Structurally, the buildings were wood and metal, but they, like the sculpture that adorned them, were covered with an impermanent material called staff, a strong, fibrous plaster meant to last only for the period of the fair. Painted white with gold touches, the whole complex was popularly nicknamed “the White City.” The main exhibit buildings were mostly great, open halls with soaring roofs, galleries, and plenty of natural light for the displays. There was no room for grain art on the sophisticated classical exteriors, but the exhibit booths on the interiors were another matter. Most states exhibited some version of cereal architecture and crop art in their Agricultural Building displays; many Midwest states also used them in their state buildings. The well-known New York firm of McKim, Meade, and White designed the Agricultural Building (Figure 4.1). Philip Martiny was in charge of the sculptural decorations, and Augustus Saint Gauden’s Diana stood atop its central dome. The Corinthian-columned main entrance portico stood 64' high, and the whole building cost more than six hundred thousand dollars.3 As unified as the exterior was, the interior was a diverse assemblage of exhibition booths supplied by thirteen foreign nations and most of the American states and territories. The chief of the departments of agriculture, livestock, and forestry was William I. Buchanan, a Sioux City man who had helped organize the earlier Corn Palaces . According to the official history of the fair, “Mr. Buchanan had acquired a familiarity with exposition matters and a reputation for their intelligent and skillful application in the Corn Palace exhibitions in the Northwest.”4 The Sioux City press also took great pride in Buchanan’s position; it saw the Chicago exhibits as the Corn Palaces’ direct legacy . Buchanan’s plan for Chicago was for each state to create its own individual pavilion within the large, open space of the Agricultural Building.5 His office approved sketches, but the states were responsible for gathering exhibition materials and...

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