Corn Palaces and Butter Queens: A History of Crop Art and Dairy Sculpture

Preface

IX Preface When I tell people I have been working on the history of corn palaces and butter sculpture for the past twelve years, they either say, oh, yes, they have been to Mitchell to see the Corn Palace, or they give me a blank stare and say, “What?” Those two responses summarize what has happened to the history of food art: either people know it through modern manifestations or they have never heard of it and find the whole idea bizarre. I first discovered cereal architecture, crop art, and butter sculpture as a graduate student preparing a master ’s thesis about Cass Gilbert’s buildings at the Saint Louis 1904 World’s Fair. The official histories of the exposition pictured amazing exhibits in the Agricultural Building, including a corn-covered classical temple, a model of the California State House in almonds, and an equestrian Teddy Roosevelt in butter. I promised myself that someday I would learn more about them. Other subjects and projects claimed my attention, though, and not until 1999, after my book Cheap, Quick, and Easy: Imitative Architectural Materials, 1870–1930 was published, was I finally ready to undertake the long-delayed study. Now, after more than a decade of research, here it is. This has not been an easy subject to explore. Although there is a rich and vast literature on food history, the world’s fairs, agricultural history, and western expansion, little has been written on corn palaces, butter sculpture, and crop art at the festivals and fairs. Aside from Karal Ann Marling’s impressive Blue Ribbon, a book published in 1990 on the Minnesota State Fair, and her pioneering article in Minnesota History in 1987 on butter sculpture , no one has addressed the broader history and cultural context of the subject. Parts of the story have been included in recent studies such as Rod Evans’s Palaces on the Prairie (2009); Travis Nygard’s master’s thesis on Oscar Howe at the mid-twentieth-century Mitchell Corn Palaces; Kelly Sisson Lessens’s work on “King Corn”; Lydia Brandt’s examination of the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition; and Colleen J. Sheehy’s study of the late twentieth-century Minnesota seed artist Lillian Colton, Seed Queen: The Story of Crop Art and the Amazing Lillian Colton (2007), as well as local histories of various corn palaces and state fairs. All of these works have contributed to the narrative, but none has attempted a comprehensive view. X PRE FACE Corn palaces, crop art, and butter sculpture, if considered at all in the literature on fairs and festivals, have usually been presented as humorous novelties, fun and folksy but not really worth serious consideration. To recover their history and to understand their context , an interdisciplinary approach was necessary. Food history proved as important as railroad expansion; the concept of manifest destiny was as essential as the stylistic aspects of architectural design; the history of agriculture was as significant as the history of the dairy industry. The most useful material came from period newspapers, official governmental reports, and historical collections from the places in the Midwest that hosted the events. Archival and photographic collections in major libraries in the United States, Canada , and Britain were useful, and another surprisingly helpful source was eBay. Regular searches for “corn” and “butter” brought to light many of the postcards, advertising cards, and stereo views that now illustrate this volume. These ephemeral items often provided names of artists who had been forgotten to history, along with subjects, dates, sponsors, and locations that helped build a chronology. Piece by piece, the elements fit together to form a story that, to date, has never been fully told. A word about terms: corn palaces and their sister grain palaces are sometimes referred to as “cereal architecture.” These large exhibition buildings are covered inside and out with a cladding of grain and other natural products. “Crop art,” as the term is used here, refers to sculpture and smaller-scaled architectural forms such as street kiosks covered in grains, seeds, and grasses. Butter sculpture is simply sculpture made from butter; it might be layered over an armature or carved from a solid block, but butter sculpture must be cooled in some manner to survive. The approach underlying this study is called “material culture” by social historians. That is, the investigation of the history of the corn palaces, crop art, and butter sculpture (the material) helps to reveal the ideas, beliefs, practices, and motives of the period (the culture) with...