Art and Handcraft in the Woman's Building
of the World's Columbian Exposition

30 ART AND HANDICRAFT infinitely joyous and hopeful quality. This is equally true of the winged groups, which are in delightful contrast to the familiar and hackneyed types that serve to represent Virtue, Sacrifice, Charity, and the other qualities which sculptors have personified, time out of mind, by large, heavy, dull-looking stone women. The sculpture throughout the Fair is of a character that deserves a more lasting form than it now possesses. A large proportion of the plaster figures of men, women, and animals which enrich the White City deserve to be preserved in bronze or marble infinitely more than most of the sculpture which is shown in the art gallery. Hereafter the old charge that there is no art atmosphere in our country will, I think, prove a futile and groundless one. A single visit to the World’s Fair must convince the most indifferent European-American that, whatever may have been the case at an earlier period, the country which has produced this great, harmoni- ous, artistic whole is not entirely lacking in art atmosphere. One of the pleasantest features of this building is the hospitality suggested throughout; the cool and quiet arcades where the visitor may sit and look out upon the varied scenes hourly enacted in that corner of the World s Fair; the roof-gardens, from which a fine view may be had. of the distant building’s, with the shimmering’ lake beyond. Here one may dine comfortably and well, or enjoy “ a dish of tea and talk, at the end of the long day of work and pleas- ure. Our building’s highest mission perhaps will be to soothe, to rest, to refresh the great army of sight-seers who march daily through the Fair. I have heard from these birds of passage various interesting comments on our building. One of these I remember as particu- larly expressive of its influence, coming as it did from a tired woman, who had labored generously and ceaselessly for many months at her little part of the great work. “ I call it the flying- building, she said; “ it seems to lift the weight off my feet when I look at those big angels.” The interior decoration is as appropriate and simple as the exterior. Touches of gold, here and there, relieve the purity of the whitest building in all the White City. The Hall of Honor is unbroken by pillars or supports, and rises grandly to its seventy feet of height. It is 67% feet wide and 200 feet long. Statistics, how- ever, avail us but little in looking at this noble hall, and it is best to remember only that it is as high as our hopes for it have been. Hon- ored names are here written in letters of gold—the names of women great m art, m song, in thought, in science, in statecraft, and in liter-