Chicago and the art of the western frontier.

• Author: Barter, Judith A.
• Position: Museums Today

FROM ITS BEGINNINGS, the growth, history, and psyche of the young American nation were unequivocally shaped by the existence of the West, a frontier to push forward in search of land and fortune. As the nation expanded, the frontier moved farther westward in an unchecked progression, suggesting the seemingly endless economic and social possibilities of the U.S. In addition, it assumed symbolic significance as an escape from the institutions, traditions, and cultural hegemony of the established East, the frontier became a place where the free-spirited could go for adventure and personal freedom. Ultimately, it seemed that the core American values--individualism, self-reliance, and a dedication to the democratic spirit--were forged in the crucible of the West.

In 1893, however, during the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Frederick Jackson Turner, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, presented a paper in the Hall of Congresses (today, The Art Institute of Chicago) entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." Turner's influential thesis was undoubtedly informed by the statistics from the 1890 U.S. Census Bureau, which declared the frontier--defined as land with fewer than two inhabitants per square mile--to be closed. By this definition, there was no longer a western frontier of unsettled land. Expressed here in demographic terms, this closure had conceptual implications as well--there no longer was an unknown terrain of possibility and promise.

The 1890 census figures pointed to another crucial demographic change--a radical decline in the Native American population, from 340,000 in 1860 to less than 250,000 three decades later Along with wories about the loss of the frontier and the dilution of the American character, there arose a fear that Indians risked extinction. Turner's paper piqued interest in these vanishing aspects of the nation's culture, promoting a rush to preserve the past, while reframing it in modern terms.

Following the World's Columbian Exposition, a "new" frontier emerged in art and literature, driven by Chicago's strong ties to the West. This new frontier became defined through expressive reinterpretations of western life, landscape, and history. Even as the actual experience of the frontier receded, artists, ethnographers, writers, patrons, and institutions explored, documented, and preserved different Wests--of archaeological fact and ethnographic record; of myth and...