Griffin MSI’s new online collection lets visitors experience the 1893 World’s Fair — and more

The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition has begun, and people dressed in their Victorian finest are headed into the south portico of the fair’s Palace of Fine Arts, a building that looks as if it has come to Chicago by way of the Acropolis.

A man has stopped to read what looks to be a fair program. Meanwhile, a boy and girl check out a giant sculpture of Athena — the goddess of war, wisdom and art — and of a lion. Both pieces sit on plinths that flank the building’s entrance.

It’s a scene captured in oil by impressionist painter Edwin H. Blashfield in 1893.

The image, called Palace of Fine Arts, shows the beauty and spectacle of the fair and of the building that now houses the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.

None of us alive today saw the World’s Fair, which took place in Jackson Park. But if we had, Blashfield’s soft pastel work might very well be how we’d remember it.

The framed painting hung in the office of the fair’s planner Daniel Burnham, until his death in 1912.

Palace of Fine Arts — which looks as fresh as it did when Bashfield painted it 132 years ago — is part of the museum’s collection. It hasn’t been publicly seen in years.

But you can see it now, along with images of more than 1,000 collection items the museum has started digitizing and placing on its website.

“We have thousands of artifacts back here, only a small percentage of which are out on the floor,” said the museum’s head curator Voula Saridakis. “So it gave us an opportunity to really … take a deep dive into what we have in our collections.”

The fair — and more

The free searchable database will feature 7,000 pieces from the museum’s 35,000-item collection. Images that are being uploaded encompass far more than pieces from the 1893 World’s Fair.

The famed U-505 submarine is there. So is a fragment of a bay window from the long ago demolished Home Insurance Building, an 1885 Chicago building credited as the world’s first true steel-framed skyscraper.

But the fair and anything related to it still retain their grip on the public after more than a century. So it’s good to see the museum showcase as many facets of it as possible — particularly those of vistas and structures that have been altered or are long gone.

For instance, the museum plans to digitize lesser-seen stereoscope images of the fair’s Ferris Wheel and of the giant revolving device under construction.

They’re plenty impressive as standalone photographs, especially in such pristine condition. But imagine what they would’ve been like when seen though an actual stereoscope, with the double image viewers providing a 3D effect.

Virtual reality for the gaslight and cobblestone era.

The museum is also digitizing items, posters, images and artifacts from Chicago’s futuristic A Century of Progress International Exposition from 1933.

Saridakis said the 1933 fair — which took place on Northerly Island and the nearby lakefront — is important to the collection because the renovated Palace of Fine Arts re-opened as the Museum of Science and Industry for the event.

“Many of our artifacts — a large, majority of our artifacts — were originally donations from people attending the 1933 [fair],” she said.

One item is the fair’s Travel and Transport Building — a structure that looks straight out of Buck Rogers with 12 towers built to support a dome over the exhibition hall — represented by a glass paperweight.

A bronze souvenir tray from the 1933 fair features a pretty faithful depiction of the wall of buildings along downtown’s Michigan Avenue, with planes and a blimp overhead flying next to pillowy cumulus clouds.

The museum also has napkin rings, pin purses, salt-and-pepper shakers, coin purses and other assorted materials from the fairs, which will make their way online, Saridakis said.

“Both fairs are important in many ways, particularly since both were positive, tangible, spatial and architectural experiences organized during national economic depressions,” John Zukowsky, author, historian and former curator of architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago, said.

“Having another online illustrated inventory would add to the wealth of imagery, artifacts, and information related to those fairs already available from other Chicago institutions.”

The museum’s digitization project began in March, and it’s funded by a $225,000 grant awarded in 2020 by the federal government’s Institute of Museum and Library Services.

“We are going to be adding more and more each month as we move forward,” Saridakis said. “And it’s very exciting to be sharing that with our visitors.”