"I had hardly washed my brushes after the completion of the Whitney mural when I was called upon to do a set of murals for the State of Indiana's exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair, which was to open on the first of June, 1933. I signed a contract for this early in December of '32, which gave me six months of execution time. The theme of this mural was the 'Social History of the State of Indiana.' The space to fill was two hundred feet long by twelve feet high, an immense project for so limited a time.
As I had to begin from scratch, knowing nothing of Indiana's history, the first month was given over to research and to traveling over the state to get the feel of it. The alignment of my subject matter into progressive sequences and its sculptural and pictorial organization, plus the mass of drawings I had to make, took about a month and a half, so that I was finally left with only a little over three months' time for execution. But working night and day [with assistants], I got the job done."
Benton divided the murals into two parallel, chronological sequences, one focused on culture and one on industry. The narrative of both streams dramatized the changes in society and the environment, capturing the aspirations and hard work that helped Indiana transform from a wilderness to an agricultural and industrial state.
The industrial panels feature early indigenous potters, the pioneer age, the evolution of river transportation to the railroads, and life on the farm up through the gas and steel booms in central and northwest Indiana. The cultural panels begin with the Mound Builders and follow the development of small farm communities into larger cities, the evolution of early schools into large universities, and social issues facing Indiana and the nation. Once completed, the murals headed to Chicago. Benton was on site not
only to supervise their installation but also to paint a free-standing
panel of the Indiana Dunes.
After the fair concluded, the murals were moved to the Indiana State Fairgrounds where they languished for nearly five years. In 1939, President Wells and Lieber worked together to convince then-Governor Cliff Townsend to donate the murals to the University of Indiana.
On December 8, 1939, the Indiana Murals arrived on the Bloomington campus. The university placed the 16 central panels in the IU Auditorium grand lobby (now known as the Hall of Murals); four panels with "recreation" themes in IU Cinema (then the University Theatre); and two panels with "business" themes in Woodburn Hall—then the center of IU's new business school.
When it was all said and done, Benton had traveled 3,000 miles studying Indiana's history and culture, used 10,000 eggs in the making of his egg-tempera paint, and created 22 panels measuring 12 feet tall and 232 feet wide! Later on he also oversaw the installation and retouching of the murals on the Bloomington campus."
To be continued
(Excerpts are from "An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography" by Thomas Hart Benton and "The Indiana Murals" on the Indiana University Bloomington website: https://murals.sitehost.iu.edu/history/index.html.)
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