Atlanta's coming of age

Magazine Antiques, August, 1995 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

If one event could be credited for putting the city of Atlanta, Georgia, on the map as an innovative southern city it would undoubtedly be the Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895. As Walter G. Cooper, the official historian of the fair wrote in 1896, it "was in every respect a remarkable achievement. Considered in the light of its environment, the circumstances attending its birth, and the resources of its promoters, it is one of the finest examples of American pluck." He was right, for the exposition followed on the heels of an economic depression, and was organized in record time for such a large-scale fair.

To commemorate the centennial of this grand occasion, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta has mounted an exhibition entitled Fine Art at the Cotton States and International Exposition: Atlanta, 1895, which will be on view from August 19 to December 31. Approximately sixty objects, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, architectural renderings, posters, photographs, ephemera, and souvenirs, convey the breadth and fine quality of the European and American works displayed at the original exposition.

The fair was the brainchild of W. A. Hemphill, the business manager of the Atlanta Constitution in 1894. The city council budgeted $75,000, to which the residents of the city added $134,000. A committee of leading citizens then approached Congress for a commitment to construct a government exhibit--a necessary prerequisite for the participation of foreign governments. Congress was persuaded to allocate $200,000 to the project because Samuel M. Inman, who became chairman of the finance committee, proposed the inclusion of a Negro building--the first of its kind. In the end the fair cost some two million dollars.

Another important aspect of the exposition was the Woman's Building, which was patterned after the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. It was organized by prominent Georgia women with support from their counterparts in at least twenty-five other states. The building was designed by a woman architect from Pittsburgh, Elise Mercur, and was one of the busiest structures at the fair. The women who ran it sponsored congresses and lectures, had a model schoolroom, and staged kitchen demonstrations. Among the exhibits were "colonial relics," Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, horticultural specimens, decorative and fine arts crafted by amateurs, and patents and inventions showing the strides women were making in fields outside the domestic sphere. The business manager of the Atlanta Journal donated the editorial space and the advertising revenue of one edition of the newspaper to the women's committee so they could solicit exhibits for their building.

The exposition was held in Piedmont Park, and most of the many buildings were designed in the Romanesque style. There were buildings devoted to electricity, machinery, transportation, and there was even a "battle scarred cabin." The Fine Arts Building--from which the objects are drawn for this exhibition--contained 787 exhibits, of which nearly half were drawings loaned by the periodicals Century, Harpers, and Scribner's. Among the artists whose work will be shown at the High Museum are Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Eastman Johnson, Theodore Robinson, Worthington Whittredge, Mary Cassatt, John La Farge, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. Among the sculptors are Paul Wayland Bartlett, Edmonia Lewis, and Frederick MacMonnies. Clearly, many of the leading artists of the day wanted their works to be seen by the one million people who visited the exposition during the three months it was open. On view was the work of the tonalists, impressionists, realists, and the Barbizon and Hudson River schools. Works by French, English, and Italian artists were also selected by the jury.

The art exhibits in the Negro Building were organized by the artist Daniel Freeman, and it was the only building where there was no charge for the exhibit on space (the other exhibitors paid $1 per square foot). As Cooper described it, "The negro exhibit, next to that of the Woman's Department, was the most sought after by visitors, and was, all things considered, the most distinctive of all the exhibits.... It was a sociological study, an ethnological fact marking the progress of an important branch of the human race under circumstances not hitherto existing." The exhibits were arranged geographically by state (fifteen of which participated) and were largely intended to promote the of African Americans since emancipation. Virginia's contribution heralded the "first colored savings bank," which had been a financial success in Richmond. The Alabama exhibit included works from the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School and the State Normal and Industrial School. The Tuskegee school exhibited "wagons, buggies, carts, stoves, engines, tin pots, tubs, toilet sets, furniture of all sorts for bedroom, library, parlor and kitchen, clothing for all classes."

African Americans were represented in the opening day ceremonies by Booker T. Washington, whose address is well known today as the "Atlanta Compromise." It is so named because he urged African Americans to strive for economic gains, but not to attempt social parity with whites.