ABSTRACT
This chapter presents different disciplines and methodologies and posing different questions, demonstrate that the era—and particularly its cultural realm—remains a rich terrain for scholars to explore. It explores Gilded Age institutions, constituencies, individuals, and, of course, works of fine and popular art while also pointing to additional avenues still open for investigation. Sally Webster argues that the Lenox Library established a standard for Gilded Age and later private libraries but does not claim to divine the motivations behind the elusive James Lenox's formation of his collections, which would later become part of the New York Public Library. The limitations of Gilded Age reform and its cultural manifestations must be evaluated in the context of an era of unprecedented growth and affluence that also produced, up to that point in the nation's history, unmatched misery. The culture industry provides the materials that filled the family parlor, the spatial and symbolic embodiment of a burgeoning, self-conscious middle class.
