Roslyn Russell connects some Library treasures to a celebrated exhibition One effect was produced by our display: The people of the United States are of a most inquisitive nature; and the large display we made, especially in our natural products, led to inquiries by visitors on almost every subject connected with the exhibits. Foreigners also, from the great nations of Europe and elsewhere, examined our representation. Australia was to most of these a terra incognita, and the name of New South Wales was, on our first appearance in Chicago, imagined to be representative of some portion of Great Britain … Before the conclusion of the Fair, New South Wales and Sydney (generally spelt ‘Sidney’ up to this time) were well known. Thus concluded Sir Arthur Renwick, Executive Commissioner for New South Wales at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, in his report to the Governor of New South Wales, the only Australian colony to accept the invitation to participate in this international event. The Exposition celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s sighting of the Americas. It was the largest of all the international expositions of the nineteenth century, and the most grandiose. The ‘White City’ formed by the Exposition’s architecture initiated the City Beautiful movement in urban planning, and the event itself testified to the fact that the United States had become the world’s leading capitalist nation on the brink of a new century. Taking advantage of his colony’s position as the sole exhibitor from Australia, Renwick teamed the name of New South Wales with that of the continent, and set about positioning both to take a ‘very important and representative position’ at the Exposition. This was, to put it mildly, a challenging task. The Exposition covered 633 acres [256 ha], and contained 65 000 exhibits. Forty-three states and territories of the USA and 23 foreign countries had their own buildings, in addition to vast pavilions housing exhibits of agriculture, manufactures, liberal arts, fine arts, fisheries, transportation, horticulture, mines and mining, and forestry. There was also a separate Woman’s Building, and an Anthropological Building close to the pleasure grounds of the Midway.
Despite the seeming impossibility of tiny New South Wales making an impression amid the splendours of neoclassical architecture built in dazzling white staff (plaster on a timber and steel framework), monumental statuary, ornamental waters, and the competing exhibits of so many nations, Renwick set about his task. Taking a subordinate position to Britain was ruled out from the start. He declined an offer of space within the British building, ‘Victoria House’, and instead erected ‘Australia House’, ‘a general representation of the old Sydney Post Office’. This ‘most useful and conspicuous centre’ served as offices for the New South Wales representatives, and a meeting place for Australian visitors to the Exposition. Sufficient space to display the exhibits sent from Australia to Chicago had then to be found within the various specialist buildings. This proved a struggle in some instances: Renwick won some battles (more space in the Mines and Mining Building) and lost others (Australian paintings went on display in ‘Australia House’ rather than in the Fine Arts building). Nevertheless, in every place where New South Wales, standing for Australia, was represented, he and his fellow Commissioners created displays that not only promoted the country’s primary and secondary production and arts and crafts to a world audience, but also introduced visitors to the symbols of an Australian nation that would not come into being formally for another seven years. Australia’s primary produce, for example, set the scene for a patriotic tableau in the Agricultural Building:
In the Horticultural Building, a Fern Court was created as part of the New South Wales exhibit, complete with tree ferns, macrozamias and bird’s-nest ferns that ‘attracted increasing attention’. These, however, did not carry the entire burden of representing Australia:
Renwick was swift to note and to counter any slight to New South Wales. At the Grand Central Station for the Exposition he noticed that a frieze of clock faces, showing the time in 24 countries, included that of arch–colonial rival Melbourne as representing Australia. This was not to be borne:
Another problem arose with the decorations inside the dome of the Exposition’s monumental Administration Building. At first ‘Australasia’ was listed on a series of panels denoting participating countries, but this panel, with others, was later removed, to avoid causing offence to countries whose names had not been mentioned. This diplomatic move had the opposite effect: Renwick fired off a missive to the Exposition administrators, stating New South Wales’s case unequivocally:
Among Australian visitors to the Exposition—and to ‘Australia House’—was journalist A.G. Stephens, later editor of the Bulletin’s Red Page and mentor to many emerging writers. His description of Chicago and the World’s Columbian Exposition in A Queenslander’s Travel Notes begins with a startling metaphor: ‘The World’s Fair is like a fair woman without discretion—it is a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout’ The ‘swine’, in this case, was the city of Chicago itself. While the World’s Exposition was ‘splendid beyond description’, said Stephens, and ‘One’s eye never wearies of gazing at beautiful vista after vista, planned with consummate art’, in the ‘real’ city, ‘Filth reigns supreme’. Not that its inhabitants would admit this for a second: Stephens related that he soon discovered that to criticise Chicago was a risky business. He was told to ‘keep your British bile to yourself’ as, he concluded, ‘the great American nation cannot bear plain home truths’. As a journalist Stephens was entitled to a press pass to the Exposition, to save the entry cost each day. Despite the best efforts of Commissioner Renwick and his helpful clerk, the bureaucratic tangle at the Exposition’s heart meant that Stephens never achieved this: ‘they actually manage these things better in Australia’. Stephens, as Renwick had done, realised that Americans knew little about Australia:
The presence of New South Wales at the Exposition, said Stephens, would be an ‘object lesson to Fair visitors’ and, in a display of native pride, he asserted that:
But the wonders of the Fair had begun to pall for Stephens, as he succumbed to a version of the phenomenon known as ‘museum fatigue’:
The World’s Exposition lasted for six months, then the exhibits were packed up and returned to their places of origin. The buildings of the ‘White City’ stood a little longer until, as was the fate of at least two other international exhibition buildings before them—the Crystal Palace that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, and the Sydney International Exhibition’s Garden Palace of 1879—they burned down, with the exception of the Palace of Fine Arts, which survives today as Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. What then remained as a lasting legacy of the Chicago World’s Exposition, as far as Australia was concerned? New South Wales garnered a clutch of prizes for a number of its exhibits. Ellis Rowan’s flower paintings, for which she won a gold medal, were singled out for individual praise in the Official Directory of the World’s Exposition: these works are now in the National Library’s Collection. Another award-winning exhibit was a collection of drawings by the Aboriginal artist, Mickey of Ulladulla. The National Library holds similar works by Mickey. Apart from the glittering prizes gained by its exhibitors, and a recognition of Australia’s potential that may have resulted from New South Wales’s participation in the Exposition, there is another sense in which Chicago’s great event of 1893 and Australia are linked. A young lad named Walter Burley Griffin saw the transformation of a swampy wasteland to a glittering ‘White City’—one he drew upon when he came to design his ‘ideal city’ on the Limestone Plains. He specifically referred to the Chicago World’s Exposition in his report for the competition to design Canberra in 1912: it had, he said, ‘produced an impression outliving … any subsequent architectural ensemble of modern times’. Chicago’s ‘White City’ of 1893 lived on in Griffin’s plan for Canberra. ROSLYN RUSSELLis a partner in Marsden Russell Historians, Canberra |
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