When asked to be part of the advisory committee to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Saint-Gaudens excitedly commented, "Do you realize that this is the greatest meeting of artists since the fifteenth century!" The prospect of artists sharing ideas excited comparison to the Renaissance because, like so many other artists of his day, Saint-Gaudens had been trained in a renaissance model of collaboration at the École des Beaux-Arts. Painters, sculptors, and architects worked together to bring a project to completion. When America began to experience its own cultural "rebirth" in the years after the Civil War, American artists, largely trained in Beaux-Arts methods, collaborated on large civic projects. The public importance of the arts in nineteenth-century America increased the public influence of the artist.