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Power and Posterity: American Art at Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition

Kimberly Orcutt’s insightful account of the organization and reception of the fine arts display at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia begins quite fittingly with the event’s opening ceremonies on May 10, 1876 (fig. 1). An unexpectedly large crowd gathered in Fairmount Park that day to witness the start of what would be a milestone in American cultural history, as well as one of the most heavily attended and thoroughly documented public experiences of the nineteenth century. The grand scale of pageantry reflected the freighted ambitions of this first major world’s fair to take place on US soil (fig. 2). Hours of patriotic speeches were followed by a hundred-gun salute and a one thousand-person choir singing Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” Inevitably, such pomp resulted in defeated expectations. Orcutt notes that even from the first, direct experience of the fair greatly diverged from the organizers’ desired narratives. One newspaper reporter wryly observed that a solemn procession of dignitaries, described in an official program to include President Ulysses S. Grant and Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil, would surely have made an imposing spectacle—if only it had been possible to spot it through the hordes of gathered spectators. In their eagerness to bear witness to history, American viewers overwhelmed the very events in which they hoped to participate, so that even from its beginning, the 1876 Centennial Exhibition proved difficult to see clearly.