MODEL CITIZENS: MURAL PAINTING, PAGEANTRY, AND THE ART OF CIVIC LIFE IN PROGRESSIVE AMERICA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ART & ART HISTORY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Annelise K. Madsen May 2010 © 2010 by Annelise Kristine Madsen. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/sy486tp5223 Includes supplemental files: 1. Complete Figure Set (including images outside the public domain) (0-AMadsen-DissFinal- eSubmission-rev-supp.pdf) ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Wanda Corn, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Scott Bukatman I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Caroline Winterer I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Bryan Wolf Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii ABSTRACT The rise of a civic art movement in Progressive America (1890s-1910s) is a story about the role that monumental art played in both stabilizing and reshaping the meanings of communal expression during a dynamic period of aesthetic, cultural, and political transformation. This dissertation focuses on the related arts of mural painting and pageantry and considers how civic artists participated on a grand scale in the era’s campaigns for reform. A kinship developed among the two art forms with respect to aesthetics, leadership, and pedagogy, as practitioners came to see themselves as agents of Progressive change. Muralists adorned public institutions including state capitols, courthouses, libraries, and schools. Pageant-masters (as pageant directors called themselves) orchestrated hundreds—and oftentimes thousands—of cast members and contributors in performances that narrated a local origin story or the ideals of a socio- political cause through a series of scripted episodes, combined with dancing interludes, tableaux, and finale processions. Like social and political reformers of the period, mural and pageant leaders worked within Progressivism’s consensual vocabulary—speaking, making, and acting in the name of community—in order to materialize a range of agendas, styles, and visions of civic improvement. This study investigates how civic artists became civic reformers at the turn of the twentieth century, and the ways they made reform into something visible, dramatic, and vital. It asks: What did Progressivism look like? What civic lessons did murals and pageants activate, and for which publics? How did civic art’s classical forms and consensual narratives resonate with its viewing communities, and how did those communities respond? I argue that civic art represented an active and contested site where makers and viewers negotiated modernity through monumental forms of communal expression. Artistic Progressives positioned their art forms at the center of the era’s broader campaign to expand participatory democracy, improve social conditions, and impose a sense of order. Through paint and playacting, they entered into cultural and political debates on Americanization, immigration, citizenship, suffrage, and the new pedagogy of learning by doing. As the nation grew increasingly diverse, murals and pageants materialized collective public histories and values on a iv grand scale. While civic art amplified narratives of a unifying Americanism, it likewise opened up cultural discussions on the myths and assumptions—racial, social, and gendered—that structured such pictorial storytelling. Communal expression represented an aesthetic working through of the meanings, boundaries, and responsibilities of civic identity in Progressive America. Mural painting and pageantry served as collaborative meeting points for art-minded citizens as well as contested zones of cultural agency. Engaging in close readings of individual mural compositions, I also attend to mural spaces, and to the cultural activities that transpired within sight of a particular institution’s adorned walls. Similarly, I understand pageantry as a constellation of events that included an official performance designed by the pageant-master as well as a set of alternative visions framed onstage, offstage, and in the press. The first two chapters consider murals, the next two consider pageants, and the final chapter examines the art forms together at a common venue. Chapter one examines the beginnings of the American mural movement at the Library of Congress and the ways its decorative program (1895-1897) launched a Progressive identity for muralists as aesthetic reformers. In chapter two, I focus on the Massachusetts State House, examining how its mural program (1900-1904) functioned as a pictorial arm of President Theodore Roosevelt’s Americanization movement. Turning to pageantry in chapter three, I examine the Pageant of Illinois (1909), staged near Chicago on the campus of Northwestern University, to show how pageant leaders, like muralists, used monumental visualizations of local history to secure their position as Progressive reformers. Chapter four considers the 1913 Suffrage Pageant-Procession in Washington, D.C., and the ways that women activists realigned pageantry’s pedagogy from that of civic uplift to a specific, political curriculum. The final chapter examines how mural painting and pageantry in and around the new Wisconsin State Capitol helped construct the Wisconsin Idea as well as how civic art’s educational campaign was institutionalized in the university community of Madison in the years leading up to America’s entrance into World War I. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS While researching and writing this dissertation, I have encountered healthy doses of kindness, enthusiasm, and support from numerous individuals and institutions. It is with great joy that I thank many of them here. My advisor, Wanda Corn, has taught me how to be an art historian—to look closely, to use historical evidence wisely, to assert my own voice, to show my reader how and why, and to tell a good story. Wanda has done so with attentiveness, engagement, academic toughness, and patience. I heartfully thank her for embracing her role as teacher and mentor at all stages of this journey of mine from student to scholar. Bryan Wolf, Scott Bukatman, and Caroline Winterer also deserve much thanks for reading drafts of this study as members of my dissertation committee, helping me to refine my arguments with their questions, suggestions, and expertise. Ellen Todd and Jennifer Marshall also offered encouragement and guidance at crucial points along the way. Additionally, I wish to thank my first teachers in art history at Washington University, especially Angela Miller, who saw potential in me as an undergraduate and nurtured my first strides in the field. She has been my biggest cheerleader ever since. Elizabeth Childs has likewise shared her scholarly advice and warmth over the years. With fondness, I also thank William Wallace, who captured my attention as a first- semester freshman in his survey course, lecturing with unbounded energy on the history of Western art. Sitting in the auditorium in Steinberg Hall during the fall of 1995, I discovered my intellectual home; my eyes opened to the field of art history. This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous support of institutional fellowships and grants that enabled me to be a fulltime graduate student for several years. Such support gave me the necessary time and resources to think, research, write, and refine each and every day until the project was thoroughly done. My research has been assisted by a Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art (2009-2010); a Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (2008- 2009); a Graduate Fellowship, Stanford University (2003-2008); Diversity Dissertation Research Opportunity Funds, Vice Provost for Graduate Education, Stanford University (2008); a Dissertation Grant, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe vi Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (2007); a United States Capitol Historical Society Fellowship (2007); a Graduate Research Opportunity Grant, School of Humanities & Sciences, Stanford University (2007); and Graduate Research Funds from the Art & Art History Department at Stanford University over the course of my graduate career. I owe many debts to the librarians, curators, and specialists who have helped me navigate the historical evidence, at moments when the archival sandbox appeared both plentiful and slim. For their time, efforts, and acumen, I would especially like to thank Peter Blank, Art & Architecture Library, Stanford University; Lorna Condon, Historic New England; James Hughes, Visitor Services, Library of Congress; Susan Greendyke Lachevre,