Charles C. Dawson

Modern life was addressed on two registers. At the outset, the fair sought to emphasize scientific and technological innovation as beacon of light at the end of the dark tunnel of the Great Depression. The 1933 world’s fair commissioned sculptor Louise Lentz Woodruff to create the Fountain of Science, the artistic focal point of the fair, which stood as the embodiment of the intersection of art and science as crucial to modernity. The tripartite statue stood at the focal point of the fair, the Hall of Science, catching the attention of many passing fairgoers. Woodruff chose to represent science as a robot flanked by a male and female figure. The fountain harkened to the origins of science and the powerful role it would play in shaping modernity. The 1933 world’s fair embraced the intersection of industry and arts as the nexus of modern life distinguishing it from its predecessors. Woodruff’s fountain existed as the embodiment of this shift in understanding of modern life and the path to continued progress. 

Formally, the fountain exemplifies Woodruff’s mastery of material and form. She studied alongside many other aspiring women sculptors of Chicago under the tutelage of Lorado Taft. Woodruff’s modernist sensibility and symbolism of cultural form stem from her time with Taft and as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The robot hinges forward bent at the waist aiding the figures in their advancement symbolic of the fair’s thematic “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.” Traditionally, women were depicted as allegorical symbols of nation within propagandistic materials. However, Woodruff presents women as individuals with equal footing to men. Woodruff’s rendering of gender equality contrasted heavily with the reality of the fair organizers’ dismissal of women’s role in the advancement of modernity. Additionally, Woodruff chose to don the figures in Egyptian wear alluding to the Egyptian origins of Western science. Thus, Woodruff positions Egypt as the cradle of civilization and scientific understanding that was relevant even then. The Egypt-mania present in the statue and other artworks of the time stems from the 1922 opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The panels of the pedestal held reliefs that symbolized the origins of the basic sciences.

Ethnographic displays provided a contrasting background to the luminosity and spectacle of modern technology. The Midway presented all of the “other” on a continuum that supported scientific racism. The ethnographic displays included make-shift indigenous villages, Oriental village, and an African village. The villages were interspersed throughout the Midway Plaisance. The indigenous sites and Mayan Temple were adjacent to the corporate pavilions and the United States Army pavilion a juxtaposition that amplified imagined boundaries of civility and modernity. At the opposite end of the Midway Plaisance, the Darkest Africa Village rested between the oddities and wonders of Ripley and the Temple of Mystery and Laff in the Dark. The Darkest Africa Exhibition bolstered the area’s factor of spectacle. The spectacle of difference that was originally meant to engage and educate the viewer was not fully received as such. The villages exaggerated and essentialized other cultures reducing them to types that could be classified and understood. The spatial organization of these displays, specifically the contrast between the wonders of the outside and unknown and the marvels of the future was necessary to propel the fair’s theme of modern life. Fair organizers need a past to amplify their visions of futurity.