Mary Cassatt's Lost Feminist Mural for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair

Key facts

• Mary Cassatt was commissioned in 1892 to paint a monumental mural for the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
• The Woman's Building was designed by architect Sophia Hayden and overseen by an all-female committee led by Bertha Palmer, with the theme of women's emancipation.
• Cassatt's mural, Modern Woman, was a triptych depicting women picking fruit, pursuing Fame, and engaging in arts, music, and dance.
• To paint the 4-meter-high, 18-meter-long canvas, Cassatt had a trench dug in the greenhouse floor at Château de Bachivillers and used a pulley system.
• The mural was shipped to Chicago in spring 1893, but Cassatt did not attend the opening; after the fair, it was stored and later lost, surviving only in photographs and drawings.
• The mural's disappearance may be due to its poor critical reception, as visitors and journalists were shocked by Cassatt's bold palette.
• Cassatt was an active suffragist, and in 1915 she raised the 'Torch of Suffrage' at rallies in New York and New Jersey for the Women's Political Union.
• A major retrospective, 'Mary Cassatt. L'indépendante,' will be held at the Musée d'Orsay from October 6, 2026, to January 31, 2027, marking the centenary of her death in 1926.