Women Muralists, Modern Woman and Feminine Spaces: Constructing Gender at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition

Abstract

Women artists of the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition were able to enter the field of public mural painting in unprecedented numbers because of the gendered associations of the buildings and rooms in which they were asked to exhibit. These Exposition spaces were similar to home-based studios and women's art institutions, as each of them were understood and codified as feminine and as such provided women artists with socially sanctioned space in which to work or to exhibit. Regardless of the implied restriction of women, both artists and visitors, to gendered spaces such as the Woman's Building, women did, however, succeed in traversing the boundaries of the Fair and were consequently able to participate in both the broader sphere of the Fair and its host city, Chicago.