Many of the major expositions held in the United States were organized, in part, to commemorate a particular event. The exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876 was designed to celebrate the nation's centennial and the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the New World. But there were greater motivations behind the organization of these and other major expositions in the United States. The main reason that expositions began to be held in the United States was to increase economic development for the nation as a whole and, especially through some of the smaller expositions, such as the South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition held in Charleston in 1901-02, for the region where the exposition was being held. The South, in particular, felt a great need to attract business to the region after the end of the Civil War. Many states had their own exhibit space at the major national expositions.
The expositions in the United States were an attempt to boost trade with other nations.. Industrialization created expanded markets by providing the ability to produce a large number of goods quickly. By showing what the United States had to offer on a grand scale, they hoped to convince foreigners, particularly Europeans, that they needed United States products. Trade with the West Indies was the main reason for the exposition in Charleston, S.C. Others expositions held in the South were designed to promote trade with South America and Asia. They wanted to convince the nation that its prosperity was linked to the export of raw materials from southern ports ( Rydell, All The World's A Fair 198). Through these expositions, not only did the United States want to attract foreigners to its goods, it wanted Europe to see it as a major cultural force. This need to establish one's country or region as a major cultural force was one of the main reasons for fine arts exhibits at American expositions.
Expositions were also organized to combat feelings of animosity towards the industrialization of the United States. There was widespread social unrest due to the rise of manufacturing. Many jobs were being eliminated and those that continued to work had their jobs broken down into small, repetitive tasks. The expositions attempted to alleviate the anxieties caused by the new industrial age. They demonstrated the so-called benefits of a industrialized and technically advanced world through impressive exhibits. An attempt was made to create a "utopian society" on the grounds of these expositions that would convince Americans that industrialization was the key to happiness and success for the individual and the nation as a whole. Paul Greenhalgh states, in his book Ephemeral Vistas, that the fine arts exhibits did not bring crowds to the expositions, they brought status. The inclusion of a fine arts exhibit at industrial exhibitions showed "a non-functional aspect of human endeavour every nation had to be seen to participate in to avoid the charge of philistinism." (198).
The Crystal Palace Exhibition held in London in 1851 was the first true world's fair. The exhibits were divided into several categories: raw materials, machinery, textiles, miscellaneous manufactured items and fine arts. The fine arts exhibit empahsized the arts as they related to manufacturing. There were only a few paintings shown and they were shown to display the skills of the person who had prepared the paints, rather than the skills of the person who had painted the picture (Holt, Art of All Nations 56).
Although the Crystal Palace Exhibition established fine arts as a category
of subsequent world's fairs, early on there was still an emphasis on the
practical, utilitarian side of the arts. The Great Industrial Exposition
in Dublin in 1853 rationalized its display of art by defining it as utilitarian:
"the fine arts themselves are utilitarian. The desires
of the eye for that which is beautiful in form and colour,
if not essential to mere existence, assuredly are so to the
enjoyment of life; and hence sculpture and painting, in the
abstract, may, it is presumed, be fitly exhibited without
transgressing the strict limits which should be assigned to
an Industrial Expo" (Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas 13.)
The first exposition to combine the display of industrial products with
fine arts, unrelated to manufacturing, was the Exposition Universelle
established by Napoleon in 1852. As a result, fine arts exhibits, in which
works were considered valuable outside of their link to manufacturing,
were a staple of subsequent world exhibitions.
The first world's fair in the United States, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, was held in New York in 1853-54. This exhibition included a display of sculpture that was probably the largest ever held in the United States up to that time. There was also a separate gallery for the display of paintings. It was the first world's fair to include a separate picture gallery as part of its exhibits (Findling, Historical Dictionary of World's Fairs and Expositions 13). Although the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations was the first world's fair held in the United States, the Centennial International Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876 was the first major world's fair held in the United States. There was a fine arts exhibit at the exposition, the first international art exhibit in the United States, and it was so popular that another building had to quickly be constructed to accommodate the crowds There were thousands of paintings, photographs and sculpture displayed, from more than twenty countries (Findling, Historical Dictionary of World's Fairs and Expositions 59). The art exhibit here is thought to have spawned the strong American interest in the arts at mid-century. Some of the American artists who exhibited here include Frederick E. Church, Edward Moran, Winslow Homer and Albert Bierstadt.
The Paris Universelle Exposition of 1889 was the first time that the United States had participated on a large scale in a European fine arts exhibition. They sent more works to the 1889 exposition, 336 paintings by 189 artists, than any other country. They were trying to establish themselves as a major force in art along side their French and British counterparts. The selections of paintings by American artists that would be shown at the Paris exposition were made by two juries, one in New York and one in Paris. The director of Fine Arts for the exhibition of American artists, Rush Christopher Hawkins, decided that the juries should be made up of artists, not dealers and collectors as in past expositions. Some of these artists included Frank D. Millet, Kenyon Cox and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The artists on the juries had somewhat diverse tastes and styles because Hawkins wanted there to be many different types of artistic examples to show the diversity that American artists were capable of (Blaugrund, Paris 1889. American Artists at the Universal Exposition 20). William Merritt Chase entered eight works, more than any other American artist at the Paris exposition, and many of his works were selected to be shown. Annette Blaugrund, of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and one of the persons involved in reorganizing some of the exhibit in 1989, believes that many of Chase's works were selected because they were more avant- garde than the work of any other New York artist. However, three-fourths of the works shown by American artists at the exposition were by expatriates. The United States had begun in the past decade to establish a reputable place for the study of the arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Previously many American artists had left to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and privately with noted French artists. The Americans were criticized by the French press for being "too derivative of the French" and this may have been due to the fact that a large number of the Americans who showed in Paris had been trained by French artists (Blaugrund, Paris 1889. American Artists at the Universal Exposition 7). In the end, an international jury gave 57 awards and 24 honorable mentions to the Americans. Over fifty of the paintings seen at the Paris exposition appeared in the exposition in Chicago four years later and over 55 of the American artists who showed in Paris would participate in the exposition in Charleston in 1901-02, with at least three of the same paintings being shown.
While the 1889 Paris Universailles Exposition's art exhibition was the largest of any held at an exposition and probably one of the most extensive held ever, the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 contained the largest exhibit of American art ever held in the United States. The directors of the fair wanted to use the art exhibit to boost America's reputation as a major force in art in the world. This comes as no surprise as building an international reputation was the goal of nearly every exhibit at the exposition. They wanted to show that the work of American artists was not merely derivative of the work of European artists, but that the Americans were developing their own style. There were 74 galleries of sculpture and painting containing about 9000 works. The art exhibition was divided into three parts: contemporary American art (this included art executed since 1876), nineteenth-century European art from private collections in America and a retrospective exhibition of late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century American art. Although the exhibition was divided into three catagories and there was an extensive catalog, it was impossible to find a particular work because of the sheer volume of work displayed (Findling, Historical Dictionary of World's Fairs and Expositions 129). The reason for including the nineteenth-century European art in the exhibit was to place the American art in the context of the work of European artists, thus making it high art to be taken seriously. Over 100 of the artists who showed in Chicago would show at the exposition in Charleston, S. C. just eight years later, with about twenty of the same paintings.
The Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo in 1901 is important to mention here because over half of the works displayed in Buffalo appeared at the South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition that opened in Charleston one month later. The Pan-American Exposition, like many of the time, was a financial failure, its only claim to fame being the assassination of President McKinley when he came to visit the exposition.
These southern expositions seem insignificant when compared to expositions such as the Paris Universelles Exposition of 1889 or the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893, however, they were a sign of the New South's attempt to establish itself as a cultural and economic force at the end of the century. Atlanta held the Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895. It had also hosted expositions in 1881 and 1887 to "advertise the New South to the nation" Findling, Historical Dictionary of World's Fairs and Expositions 140). The successful Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition was held in Nashville in 1897.
The American art scene represented at the expositions taking place in the United States in the last half of the nineteenth-century emerged out of the post-civil war climate. The country was looking to establish itself as a world power not only through politics and economics, but through the arts. The arts, including painting, music and sculpture, "were signs of a people's vitality, proof of their claims to greatness and authority" (Morgan, New Muses 5). Hopefully, it would also temper the materialism of the industrial age, with an element of culture and refinement.