Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

by Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

Miss Bernays reports as follows:

In order to arrive at an accurate idea of the value of women's work as compared with men's, it would have been necessary to study the St. Louis Exposition from the time of its opening to the close, with a view to collecting data and statistics on this question. Furthermore, to get definite results regarding the progress of women since the Columbian Exposition one would have had to have access to the researches and statistics of former expositions on this subject, if such there exist. I visited both the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the Paris Exposition of 1900, but I have only impressions of the work by women as exhibited there. Nor can I furnish figures, percentages, or even accurate estimates of women's work at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The observations subjoined have value only in so far as the interest in women's work lies always in the under-current of my thought. Even under the terrific stress of the enormous amount of work pressed into the few short days of jury duty I was vividly impressed with the dignity of the work accomplished in arts and crafts by the women of Germany, where it was exhibited together with that of men. In the one instance where women secluded themselves it was shown with appalling force that the result was tawdry and inharmonious.

I was appointed by the board of lady managers to serve upon the department jury in the same classification of which I had served as group juror, for "Kunstgewerbe" (Arts and Crafts). Finding my group divided into four classes—Fixed inner decoration, Furniture, Stained glass, and Mortuary monuments—with numberless exhibits m various buildings all over the grounds, I elected to serve in the class for "Fixed inner decoration." I was aware that I had been appointed for Germany because of the great interest I had taken in the movement for harmony in household art inaugurated in Germany about ten years ago. This movement admits of no division into "fixed inner decoration" and "furniture," etc., but regards the arrangement and decoration of spaces with a view to the effect of the "ensemble." Following the lead of our distinguished chairman, Doctor Wuthesius, we adhered to this idea in spite of the barbarous separation ordered by the official instructions. Thus I was enabled to gain an insight into what women were accomplishing in industrial art, which would have been impossible had I permitted myself to look only upon "fixed inner decoration."

The exhibits made by our own country in household art were meager compared to those of several foreign countries, notably Germany and Austria. Nor was it possible to gain information from our exhibitors as full and as accurate as from some of the foreigners. Here again the Germans were to the front with a complete, reliable, and artistically finished catalogue, which they freely distributed among the jurors. Only the Japanese were as perfectly equipped in the matter of literature on their exhibits and as lavish of information to the jurors as the Germans.

I have no doubt that American women are as extensively employed in industrial art as the women of Europe, but, excepting in pottery, their forward stride was not made to appear pronounced at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Woman's work as a maker of laces was not so exhibited as to make it readily distinguishable from men's, although it must have entered largely into the exhibits made, which, however, as I have just said, did not adequately represent the United States, many of the best and most renowned eastern firms having chosen to absent themselves.

Nor were foreign women, always the Germans and Austrians excepted, frequent or prominent in the showing made. In the two countries mentioned women have been undoubtedly taken up as factors which hereafter are to count in the arts and crafts. We found German women in a perceptible number exhibiting side by side with men, holding their own fairly well in decorative painting, as designers of rooms, of carpets and wall coverings, workers in iron and other metals, while in tapestry, weaving embroidery, and lace work their advance is nothing short of astonishing.

Wherever in the Varied Industries Building, in the German House, in the Austrian Pavilion, and elsewhere the work of German women was incorporated into the general scheme of the decorations and furnishings, wherever women, together with men, designed and planned, or wherever they carried out the designs of men, harmony was the result. Women's work was found to blend perfectly with men's when both worked on a common plan to a common end. Of course women in German art, as elsewhere, are numerically immensely in the minority, nor do they as yet often attempt the grand, the monumental, the complex. But many of them are honest and efficient helpers, whose eyes and hands show excellent training. They are, besides, enthusiastic supporters and intelligent abettors of the new movement which aims to achieve homogeneousness in the arts of living.

Again and again in the German exhibits one was constrained to note that the female members of an artist's family were frequently represented by work of their own. One encountered Bruno and Fra Wille, joint designers of rooms, carpets, wall coverings; Professor Behrens's wife plans a variety of things from costumes to book covering. There are feminine Hubers, Spindlers, Laengers in the catalogue, showing that the Germans who have been so long reckoned as addicted to the cult of the "Hausfrau" only, are beginning to accord the woman artist due recognition.

It was all the more amazing to find that Germany, the very Germany who, by general verdict, had given the most complete exhibit of household art ever shown at any exposition, who, as I have just pointed out had brought forward its craftswomen in no contemptible role, should all unconsciously furnish the striking, the classical example of the folly of separating the sexes at an exposition. The "Verein Berliner Kunstlevinnen" made an exhibit of exclusively feminine work, which was as pointedly painful, as conspicuously lacking in force and originality, as confused as to arrangement as have been all the previous displays, where the accentuated feminine was relegated to separate little buildings or separate little corners in buildings. I saw more than one German artist hustle his American friends past that part of the Varied Industries Building, where abominations of his misguided countrywomen were on view. And more than one told me that it was a slander on what German women could do. This only goes to prove that the action of the authorities in charge of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition believed to be the fact: That the exhibition of woman's work, apart from men's, runs to the tawdry, the insignificant, and the unnecessary. Therefore, separation of the sexes in the display at expositions should not be tolerated.

Department E, Machinery, Mr. Thomas M. Moore, Chief; Miss Edith J.
Griswold, New York City, Department Juror.