The Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend, Wisconsin, is hosting a talk on “The Vanishing City: Excavating the World’s Fair of 1893” on Saturday, February 8, 2020, from 2-3:30 pm.
Rebecca Graff, associate professor of anthropology at Lake Forest College (IL), divulges what is hiding beneath the surface of Jackson Park. Professor Graff will discuss her archaeological and archival research focused on the Fair’s ephemeral “White City” and Midway Plaisance. The results of the excavation in Jackson Park revealed a robust archaeological signature of the extensive sanitary infrastructure of the Fair and, surprisingly, delicate plaster remains of the Fair’s Ohio State Building. Graff’s work links the Fair, as a catalyst for structural change and its material record, to the larger social structures of late nineteenth century America.
MOWA (205 Veterans Avenue in West Bend, WI) is home to two works that Marr exhibited at the 1893 World’s Fair: The Flagellants and Summer Afternoon,
The Ohio Building, remnants of which are buried under Jackson Park. [Image from The Dream City. A Portfolio of Photographic Views of the World’s Columbian Exposition. N. D. Thompson, 1893.]