A New World.

"Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us," said John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Winthrop spoke these words in a sermon he delivered on shipboard as he and his fellow Puritans crossed the Atlantic to the New World in 1630. Two and a half centuries later the "eyes of all people" gazed once more on America—specifically on Chicago, site of the spectacular World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. On the shores of Lake Michigan fair organizers had erected a White City, symbol of a gleaming past and a sparkling future. America in the late nineteenth century stood poised to enter a new era of world prominence, and it hoped to demonstrate its worthiness through its art. On both sides of the Atlantic many still considered the American arts second rate copies of...