The Flagler Museum in Palm Beach will open a new exhibit, “America Takes the Stage: From the White City to Whitehall,” on Nov. 10, 2026. The show was curated by guest curator Mosette Broderick, an author, historian and professor of architecture at New York University.
The exhibit starts with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which drew 27 million visitors to its neoclassical “White City.” The fair was designed by Daniel H. Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted.
Henry Flagler, who was watching the fair, later built Palm Beach into a winter resort for wealthy northerners. In 1902 he completed Whitehall, his permanent home, in the same architectural style as the Chicago exhibition. Broderick’s essay argues that both projects were built to show Americans that world-class culture and spectacle did not require a trip to Europe.
For South Florida visitors, the exhibit offers a look at how a temporary fair shaped one of the region’s best-known landmarks. Whitehall, now the Flagler Museum, is the only permanent monument to that moment, according to the museum.
