Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
September 9, 2009
Columbian World Fair Yesterday and Today
“The City White hath fled the earth,
But where the azure waters lie,
A nobler city hath its birth,
The City Gray that ne’er shall die.”
These words are part of the University 0f Chicago’s alma mater, and refer to the ending of the 1893 Columbia World Exposition that took place in Jackson Park and on the Midway. A few days ago I biked south to the Japanese Gardens, a small and relatively unknown spot behind the Museum of Science and Industry. The Japanese government turned the area from a swamp into a landscaped area of trees, paths, a pagoda, waterfall, and small footbridge. Biking a bit farther south towards the 63rd St. beach, I came across Republic, a golden sculpture of a woman who symbolizes national unity. She’s 24 ft. high now, a reproduction of the original sixty five foot sculpture that was destroyed along with much of the rest of the exposition in an 1894 fire.
The buildings for the exposition took over two years to build, and about 27 million visitors came to the fair between May and October of 1893. I imagine their spirits still wandering around the now deserted Midway and Jackson Park area, gawking at the displays of “native villages,” the ferris wheel, the new inventions in electricity. The fair was a celebration of consumerism, and many believed at that time (and still do) that Chicago was the capitalist center of the most capitalist nation on earth. Those that set up and profited from the fair were politicians and businessmen, sending out the message that the success of America’s future was bound up with an alliance between business, culture, and the state.
The bus stop outside my window has been sporting a Chicago 2016 olympics sign for the past few weeks, and I cringe a little every time I go out on my balcony. It’s intriguing to think about the remnants of the World Fair and how a similar commercial enterprise more than 100 years later would affect the city. I believe that politicians tout improvements in the city’s architecture and transportation but the most pressing and immediate transformations would involve displacement of low-income people and suspension of civil rights during the games.
The history of the exposition and its connection with the founding of the university is certainly fascinating, though its important to remember the racism and exploitation that were also a large part of the fair. It also is representative of a series of discontents and disconnects between the ideology of much of the humanities and social sciences faculty and the way the administration runs the school. Multiculturalism, anti free-market solutions, peace, and tolerance are all ideals that are taught in most of my classes (for instance, all undergrads are made to read Marx in SOSC), but the University is building the Milton Friedman Institute. And let’s not forget that this was the birthplace of atomic energy. We even have a nice Henry Moore sculpture to commemorate it.
1 Response to Columbian World Fair Yesterday and Today
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You’re pointing out the irony that much of our most beloved art, thought, and culture is underwritten by major commercial enterprise (Chicago Humanities out of well-endowed Chicago Economics) or much worse, brutal state power (Henry Moore astride the site of the nuclear chain reaction). American theaters—like Court Theatre—are supported by corporate sponsors (and their European counterparts by the state, some less savory than others—Bertolt Brecht worked for years after WWII funded by a highly oppressive government). As arts patrons most of us are accustomed to taking the art and leaving the rest, either because we ignore it or because we think the art transcends the its means of production.
I think Anastasia and I both know who’s the revolutionary between the two of us, and that I tend to believe that major commercial enterprise, notwithstanding certain major qualifications, can be an engine for good society, good culture, and good art. Thus, I don’t take it as fact that alliances among business, culture, and the state always screw over the people completely and categorically in the end. (And I’m also willing to argue that Milton Friedman’s economic theory isn’t always antithetical to multiculturalism, peace, and tolerance, too.)
For me, what it comes down to is: Will the Olympics create enough jobs to justify the expense to taxpayers? Will infrastructure be so improved as to justify the residents displaced? Does this cultural event sufficiently transcend its human and financial cost?
By Drew Dir on September 9, 2009 at 4:44 pm