The American salon: The Art Gallery at the Chicago Interstate Industrial Exposition, 1873--1890

The annual exhibitions in the Art Gallery of the Chicago Interstate Industrial Exposition, 1873-1890, were considered by many contemporary critics and artists to be the most exciting and liberal annual exhibition of American art in the country. Although the Art Gallery managers were initially dependent upon the National Academy of Design for direction, by the mid-1870s they had begun to demonstrate independence from New York, much as younger artists returning from study abroad began to chafe under the authority of the National Academy. Beginning in 1877, the Art Gallery began to demonstrate its independence by exhibiting increasing numbers of works by artists associated with the Society of American Artists, as well as by expatriate artists. In 1883, the Art Gallery began to import works by Americans that had exhibited in the Paris Salon, where audiences saw them before those in other major metropolitan areas in the United States.;The relationship of American art to its European influences, as discussed in the Chicago press and seen on the walls of the Exposition Art Gallery, offers new prospects for understanding how the increasing cosmopolitanism of American art was received by audiences outside New York. It also places Chicago squarely in the center of the debate about the character of a national art in the face of the return of American artists trained in Europe or influenced by newer European techniques, styles, and changing palettes. Because the Art Gallery did not take sides in the struggles between the "old guard" and "new men" that characterized the art scene in New York, visitors to the Exposition were presented with a more comprehensive view of the developments in American art during the last quarter of the 19th century than could be seen nearly anywhere else---thus earning the title given to it by artists of the day: "the American Salon.";A New York-centric perspective dominates our understanding of the development of American art at the end of the 19th century. This study intends to change that paradigm by demonstrating that not only was Chicago a leader in the exhibition of American art, but that in many cases it anticipated New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in exhibiting and embracing its more progressive elements.