DESCRIPTION: 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.
BIO: Ruth D. Nelson received her MA in Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For her thesis research on the Marquette Building in Chicago, she received the Corning Museum of Glass Rakow Research Grant. In 2018, Ruth was selected as a State of Illinois Humanities Council Road Scholar. Ruth teaches art history in the continuing education department of the College of DuPage and continues her research and writing on topics in American art history.