| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Virgin & the Dynamo: Public Murals in American Architecture, 1893–1917. By Bailey Van Hook. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003. xxii, 240 pp. $44.95, ISBN 0-8214-1501-8.)

This well-designed and clearly written book presents the history of the beaux arts murals movement, an era of allegorical vocabulary and decorative style that began with the U.S. centennial in 1876 and ended after World War I. The 1893 Columbian Exposition proved a crucial spur to the movement, Bailey Van Hook argues. The visibility of its mural commissions inspired decoration of other public buildings, and the networks of artists formed on site helped to create an artistic community with a shared aesthetic and rationale for mural decoration. Beaux arts murals proved an effective vehicle for the City Beautiful movement, a public art that expressed its values of democratic participation and its concern for assimilation and edification of the viewing public.

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