Cultural Change and Shifting View of American

World’s fairs and expositions that were held in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries celebrated the past while introducing visions of the future. These fairs and expositions helped by showing America was a land of innovation and success ready to partake with the larger world. The Chicago World’s Fair was a truly epoch–making event as it marketed and shaped an imaginary of the city and of urban everyday life adequate to the new economic and social conditions of America.

As soon as Chicago won the bid for approval to host the fair, many prominent civic, professional and commercial leaders from around the United States worked together to finance, coordinate and manage the fair. From past fairs that had been held this was thought to be a way to bring communities together. It was a perfect time to host a fair due to the anniversary of Columbus landing. The fair was planned in the 1890s during the Gilded Age of rapid industrial growth, immigration and class tension.

After all the planning the hope was that, “the 1893 fair was also intended for financial gain, its backers hoping to offset a worsening economic depression and to outshine Paris’s recent Universal Exposition (1889) in terms of attendance figures and profits. (Doss, Erika). The Chicago’s Fair paid tribute to the progress of American culture and promised of a new century.

The fair was broken down into two sections. One was known as the “White City” of neoclassical architecture which held hundreds of artistic and industrial exhibits. The second section was known as the “Midway Plaisance,” a mile long strip of honky tonk entertainment, shops, and ethnographic displays. (Doss, Erika). The White City got its name from all the buildings being white buildings was the most amazing display of 65,000 exhibits depicting (to quote the Exposition promoters) "all of the highest and best achievements of modern civilization; all that was strange, beautiful, artistic, and inspiring; a vast and wonderful university of the arts and sciences, teaching a noble lesson in history, art, science, discovery and invention, designed to stimulate the youth of this and future generations to greater and more heroic endeavor.” (The White City, Nichols, K.L.) The art from this time frame was much different than that of the Ashcan School.

Equally important was the Ashcan School. The Ashcan School was a realistic art

movement

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