Through monuments and artwork, Searching for Marquette retells the story of the 17th-century French Jesuit missionary-explorer, Father Jacques Marquette, the celebrated surveyor of the Mississippi River. But his expedition down the Great River was only part of the Marquette legacy, which began on the southern shore of Lake Superior and ended on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Searching for Marquette follows his journey through today’s cities and towns in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Arkansas to uncover French relics, Native-American royalty, and hardy settlers in a drama of faith, the fur trade and the future of Americas heartland. https://tinyurl.com/Searching-for-Marquette
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The Vatican Pavilion at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair
Heaven this side of Earth Recruiting the Vatican to participate in the Fair might have been a long shot for Robert Moses, the president of the Fair, had the Vatican not already participated in the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958. The Vatican pavilion, as well as the Brussels Fair itself, signaled some of the trends and tensions that would surface five years later in New York. Strategically, the Vatican Pavilion was located smack dab between the United States pavilion on one side and the Soviet Union on the other. In the Cold War battle for hearts and minds, this was an opportunity not to be missed. But now, with far…
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Shipping the Pieta
From St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City to Flushing Meadows, Queens When Pope John XXIII agreed to send the Pietà to New York, for what some considered as frivolous as a fair, the news hit the art establishment like an atom bomb. The reaction from the media and academia was fierce, and even the Pope came under criticism. It didn’t matter what how much the naysayers protested, Roma locuta, causa finita est. Moses had his blockbuster attraction and Spellman had his assignment. Spellman’s success turned on the team that he had assembled to hammer out all the details of shipping the Pietà. The members of the newly-formed Vatican Pavilion Transport Committee…
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Our Lady of the World’s Fair
Our Lady of the World’s Fair is the story of how two of New York’s most influential leaders persuaded the Vatican to allow one of the world’s greatest works of art to leave Europe for the first and only time. Driven by different motives, Robert Moses and Francis Cardinal Spellman had the same vision: to display Michelangelo’s masterpiece, the Pietà, in the Vatican’s pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City. Moses believed this blockbuster would guarantee the fair’s financial success. At the same time, Spellman, Cardinal of New York and the spiritual leader of Cold War America’s Catholic community, hoped that at a time of domestic strife and global conflict,…
