TEMPLES OF THE CITY, PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY: CHICAGO AND THE MODERN MUSEUM MOVEMENT, 1880S-1940S

Abstract

This dissertation considers the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Science and Industry and the circumstances that surround their founding and early history. From the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century, Chicago became home to many large museums, including those listed above. Chicagoans established cultural institutions partially to combat national views of the city as crude and uncultured. The museums that were established in Chicago between the 1880s and WWII were both the exception and the rule of American museums. They followed the national trends that embraced natural history, art, and science museums as well as metropolitan museum building. The rapid pace at which Chicago museums were established was exceptional.

The success of Chicago’s museums came from the cooperative support that their founders were able to garner with the city government and private philanthropists. The pooling of sustained public and private effort gave the museums the resources they needed to flourish. The growth in cultural institutions can also be partially linked to Chicago hosting two World’s Fairs just forty years apart. Cooperation between the Commercial Club of Chicago, the South Park Commissioners, World’s Fairs and the three museums created a system for museum founding and support that enabled Chicago’s museums to grow at an extraordinary pace and scale.