The Chicago World's Columbian Exposition (WCE) was one of the largest and most successful World's Fairs in Europe and North America during the 19th and early 20th centuries. With its glistening White City along Lake Michigan in Jackson Park, and its highly successful Midway Plaisance featuring rides, amusements and foreign (often colonial) concessions and villages, the 1893 WCE set benchmarks for fairs, theme parks, monumental architecture and sculpture for years to come.¹ Its material contents, tens of thousands of objects, formed the basis for the first collections of the Chicago's Field Museum (initially named The Field Columbian Museum). Commercially, the WCE organizers helped to establish new standards for advertising and marketing as well.²

The magnificent buildings of the monumental White City in the World's Columbian Exposition were stocked with products from the growth and development of late 19th century industry and capitalism—they were glistening temples to manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, horticulture, and technology (electricity)—exhibiting the fabulous magnitude of the Industrial Revolution, whose effects reverberated throughout most of the world. In addition, the cultural achievements of the so-called "advanced" nations were displayed around the White City—in buildings (Art, Women, and numerous state and national buildings), Congresses (mostly held at the current Art Institute building in downtown Chicago), and featured in concerts and special celebrations.


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