The World's Columbian Exposition was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, held in Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago had won the right to host the fair over several other cities, including New York City, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis. The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American architecture, the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image.
Sarah Margaret Fuller, sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first American female war correspondent and full-time book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.
The Transcendental Club was a group of New England authors, philosophers, socialists, politicians and intellectuals of the early-to-mid-19th century which gave rise to Transcendentalism.
William Ordway Partridge was an American sculptor, teacher and author. Among his best-known works are the Shakespeare Monument in Chicago, the equestrian statue of General Grant in Brooklyn, the Pietà at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan, and the Pocahontas statue in Jamestown, Virginia.
James Freeman Clarke was an American minister, theologian and author.
Bela Lyon Pratt was an American sculptor from Connecticut.
Sophia Hayden was an American architect and first female graduate of the four-year program in architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Anne Whitney was an American sculptor and poet. She made full-length and bust sculptures of prominent political and historical figures, and her works are in major museums in the United States. She received prestigious commissions for monuments. Two statues of Samuel Adams were made by Whitney and are located in Washington, D.C.'s National Statuary Hall Collection and in front of Faneuil Hall in Boston. She also created two monuments to Leif Erikson.
Edwin Tryon Billings (1824-1893) or E.T. Billings was a portrait painter in 19th-century United States. He lived in Montgomery, Alabama; Worcester, Massachusetts; and in Boston. Among his numerous portrait subjects were Daniel Webster, William Lloyd Garrison and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Lydia Amanda Brewster Sewell was a 19th-century American painter of portraits and genre scenes. Lydia Amanda Brewster studied art in the United States and in Paris before marrying her husband, fellow artist Robert Van Vorst Sewell. She won a bronze medal for her mural Arcadia at The World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. She continued to win medals at expositions and was the first woman to win a major prize at the National Academy of Design, where she was made an Associate Academian in 1903. She was vice president of the Woman's Art Club of New York by 1906. Her works are in several public collections.
Enella Benedict was an American realism and landscape painter. She taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was a founder and director for nearly 50 years for the Art School at the Hull House.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 is a nonfiction book by American writer and transcendentalist Margaret Fuller based on her experiences traveling to the Great Lakes region.
Gabrielle de Veaux Clements was an American painter, print maker, and muralist. She studied art at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in Paris at Académie Julian. Clements also studied science at Cornell University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. She created murals, painted portraits, and made etchings. Clements taught in Philadelphia and in Baltimore at Bryn Mawr School. Her works have been exhibited in the United States and at the Paris Salon. Clements works are in several public collections. Her life companion was fellow artist Ellen Day Hale.
William Merchant Richardson French (1843–1914) was an American engineer. French first came to Chicago in 1867 to pursue a career in civil engineering and landscaping. While working in Chicago, he garnered a national reputation for his lectures and articles on art subjects. In 1878, he became Secretary of The Chicago Academy of Design, which was later reorganized as the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (1879). The Chicago Academy of Fine Arts changed its name to The Art Institute of Chicago in 1882. French became the secretary of this new corporation and its first director in 1885, holding this position until his death in 1914.
The sisters Clara Welles Lathrop (1853–1907), Bessie Stebbins Lathrop (1854–1930) and Susanne (Susie) Lathrop (1860–1938) were artists and teachers in Northampton, Massachusetts, who exhibited and traveled widely. Clara was a painter, Bessie was a leather worker and woodcarver, and Susie illustrated publications. In addition to exhibiting in the U.S. and Europe, they organized intellectual salons at their Northampton studio and taught art at schools including Smith College.
Sarah Fisher Ames (1817–1901) was an American sculptor.
The Woman's Building was designed and built for the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 under the auspices of the Board of Lady Managers. Of the twelve main buildings for the Exhibition, on June 30, 1892 The Woman's Building was the first to be completed. It had exhibition space as well as an assembly room, a library, and a Hall of Honor. The History of the World's Fair states, "It will be a long time before such an aggregation of woman's work, as may now be seen in the Woman's Building, can be gathered from all parts of the world again."
Katherine Tupper Hooper Prescott was an American sculptor. She worked primarily in plaster.
Sarah Gooll Putnam (1851–1912) was an American painter. From a prominent Boston family, she was known for her portraits and landscapes.
Caroline Sturgis Tappan, commonly known as Caroline Sturgis, or "Cary" Sturgis, was an American Transcendentalist poet and artist. She is particularly known for her friendships and frequent correspondences with prominent American Transcendentalists, such as Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Sturgis published 25 poems in four different volumes of The Dial, a Transcendental periodical. She also wrote and illustrated two books for children, Rainbows for Children (1847) and The Magician’s Show Box, and Other Stories (1856).
