By Sarah Peters Kernan

This summer proves to be an exciting one for anyone seeking recipes-related exhibitions at museums, libraries, and other institutions. Many exhibitions featuring the history of food, medicine, and science are well underway or opening soon, and many of the below institutions have created online components to accompany the in-person exhibitions. You will also see below that two culinary museums have opened this year. Furthermore (and excitingly!), exhibitions of interest are already being announced for 2023, such as Staging the Table in Europe, 1500–1800. Be sure to check the websites for full descriptions, as well as information like hours, fees, directions, and COVID-19 updates. Thank you to all in the Recipes Project community who contributed to this post and let me know about upcoming exhibitions! We always welcome readers to share your trips to any museums and exhibits of interest to the Recipes Project community on Twitter or Facebook!

African/American: Making the Nation’s Table

Museum of Food and Drink (New York, NY, USA)

Through 19 June 2022

African/American offers a view of the breadth of African American culinary traditions and innovations. The exhibition celebrates and seeks recognition for the countless Black chefs, farmers, and food and drink producers who shaped American food culture. Visitors can experience 400 years of Black influence on agriculture, culinary arts, brewing and distilling, and commerce, particularly through their movements during the Atlantic Slave Trade and Great Migration. The exhibition features impressive installations, such as the Ebony Magazine Test Kitchen and the Legacy Quilt, a collaborative project celebrating people, stories, and art; the Legacy Quilt also includes an interactive, virtual experience. Links to other interactive experiences such as the Virtual Reality Theater and Mapping the Nation’s Table are available on the exhibition website.

Alchemies of Scent

Prague, Czech Republic

June 2022

Alchemies of Scent is an interdisciplinary research group exploring the practice of ancient Egyptian and Greek perfumery, studying its place in the history of science, and examining the changing connections between art, craft, science and culture in the ancient Mediterranean world. In June 2022, the group is hosting two public workshops and a performance. Participants in the workshops, The Metopion Perfume: Ingredients and Experiment, will learn the myths and stories of scents and substances of the Ancient Mediterranean by plunging into one of the first cross-cultural perfumes of the Greco-Egyptian world: the Metopion. Through smell, taste, and touch, participants will experience the differences between past and present ingredients. Additionally, participants will develop skills of interpreting ancient recipes. Alchemies of Scent is also hosting a dramatization of the myth of Myrrha (the birth of Myrrh according to Ovid and Hyginus) on 17 June 2022.

Animalistic! From Animals to Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients

Pharmaziemuseum Universität Basel (Basel, Switzerland)

Through 5 June 2022

Four institutions in Basel are exploring a single theme, the relationship between humans and animals, through four distinct exhibitions. Each exhibition considers questions such as “how has the relationship between humans and animals changed, here and elsewhere?” and “what are the strengths and abilities attributed to animals?” The Pharmacy Museum’s exhibition investigates the use of animals as drugs, active ingredients of pharmaceuticals, and symbols in the history of pharmacy up to the present day. These themes are addressed through a fascinating collection of texts, artifacts, and specimens such as bezoars, isinglass, musk, Spanish flies, and snake flesh.

The Essence of a Painting. An Olfactory Exhibition

Museo del Prado (Madrid, Spain)

Through 3 July 2022

This innovative exhibition allows visitors to experience the Prado’s collections through the sense of smell. In collaboration with the Perfume Academy Foundation and the “AirParfum” technology developed by Puig, the perfumer Gregorio Sola created ten fragrances associated with elements present in the painting “The Sense of Smell,” part of the series on “The Five Senses” executed by Jan Brueghel in 1617 and 1618. The fragrances allow visitors to appreciate elements in the painting in a new way. For example, Sola has crafted the fragrance “Gloves,” which reproduces the smell of gloves scented with ambergris, based on a 1696 recipe. All ten aromas in the exhibition are detailed on the website.

Food for Thought: Riddles and Riddling Ways

McGill Library (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

Through 30 June 2022

Visitors to the Food for Thought exhibition will explore mealtime riddle practices through items curated from McGill Library’s collections and beyond. Focusing particularly on the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the exhibition reveals ways in which people bonded during meals. This exhibition stems from a broader project, the Riddle Project.

FOOD: Recipe or Remedy

Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, UK)

Through 27 January 2023

This exhibition explores the relationship between food and health over the last 600 years. The featured objects and texts on display consider changing ideas about how food could be used as a prophylactic, cure, and more. The exhibition also highlights the role of the physician, particularly Fellows and Members of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, in the development of food-based medical treatments. The website includes links to recorded talks and articles related to the exhibition.

Garum, Biblioteca e Museo della Cucina

Rome, Italy

Garum is a culinary library and museum tracing the history of cooking and eating habits from the fifteenth century to the present. The museum boasts collections of culinary artifacts used in haute cuisine, home kitchens, and the creation of professional pastry, chocolate, and ices. The library consists of a fine collection of antiquarian culinary texts, including rare editions of Platina, Scappi, Menon, Carême, and Escoffier.

LA Plaza Cocina

Los Angeles, CA, USA

LA Plaza Cocina, a museum dedicated to Mexican and Mexican American cuisine, opened earlier this year with its inaugural exhibition Maize: Past, Present and Future. Through objects, images, and cookbooks, the exhibition celebrates maize as a sacred grain and global food source. The museum will feature a new exhibition every six months. This culinary museum also includes online tours and exhibitions.

Awaken ______: An Experimental Exhibit, Prototype B

Mercer Museum (Doylestown, PA, USA)

Through Late Summer 2022

Henry Mercer established the Mercer Museum to give people tangible reminders of preindustrial daily life, including the collective acts of creativity, innovation, problem-solving, and making do. Prototype B, the second part of the exhibition series, Awaken, explores these acts through the themes of food, cooking, dining, and inheritance. The exhibit includes an installation devoted to cooking and recipes and another on dining and unforgettable meals. Visitors are encouraged to share their own food-related stories, traditions, and memories.

[Re]Framing Graphic Medicine: Comics and the History of Medicine

University of Chicago Library (Chicago, IL, USA)

Through 15 July 2022

Drawing upon prints, illustrated newspapers and magazines, comic books, zines, and more, this exhibition seeks to reframe the history of medical images towards a broader socio-cultural history. The exhibition’s images span a range of themes, perspectives, and eras to address topics such as environmental health, gender and sexuality, disability, and health inequities.

Rice: A Story of Africa and the Americas

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (Cambridge, MA, USA)

Opens 16 June 2022

This mini exhibit set within the Resetting the Table exhibition is focused on rice cultivation in the Americas. It explores the establishment of the rice industry based upon African knowledge systems, the toll of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and the lasting culture of the Gullah Geechee, the descendants of the enslaved Africans who provided labor for the rice industry.

Through a Glass Darkly: Alchemy and the Ripley Scrolls 1400-1700

Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ, USA)

Through 17 July 2022

Princeton University holds two of the twenty-three extant Ripley Scrolls, each spectacular manuscripts central to the transmission of alchemical knowledge in premodern Europe. This exhibition featuring Princeton’s Ripley Scrolls shows how European alchemists built upon Greco-Egyptian, Islamic, and late medieval knowledge to create a golden age of alchemy from the 15^th through 17^th centuries. An accompanying digital exhibition is also available.

If you’d like to feature a museum exhibition or collection on the Around the Table, please email Sarah Kernan.

By Sarah Peters Kernan

For anyone able to safely travel in December or January, several museums have special exhibitions related to the history of food, medicine, and science. In addition to in-person exhibitions, several museums also have created online components or a completely virtual experience; be sure to check the websites for full descriptions, as well as information like hours, fees, directions, and COVID-19 updates. We also welcome readers to share your trips to any museums and exhibits of interest to the Recipes Project community on Twitter or Facebook!

The Art of Food: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation

The University of Arizona Museum of Art (Tucson, AZ, USA)

Through 20 March 2022

The Art of Food, featuring over 100 works from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation, displays how some of the most renowned artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have considered the subject of food. Through a range of media, artists contemplate the necessity of food for sustenance, community, and culture. The artwork displays a range of interaction with food, from production to cooking to consumption. In addition to the physical exhibition, the experience also includes Community Food Stories, a digital collection of  stories authored by members of Tucson’s food community.

CONTAGION

Science Gallery Bengaluru (Online Exhibition)

Through 31 December 2021

To explore the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, CONTAGION presents artistic, scientific, historical, and contemporary voices and perspectives. This online exhibition examines the transmission of emotions, behaviors, ideas, and diseases, so that visitors can contemplate their spread and impact. The exhibition goes beyond a website; instead, it is an immersive experience, providing writing prompts to all visitors, and frequent live events like lectures, workshops, film screenings, and more. This exhibition was curated by Danielle Olsen and Jahnavi Phalkey.

Contagious!

Rijksmuseum Boerhaave (Leiden, Netherlands)

Through 9 January 2022

This exhibition on contagious diseases considers historical outbreaks as well as the more recent coronavirus outbreak. Contagious! invites consideration about how people confronted epidemics in the past and how insights of past outbreaks can inform future responses. The exhibition includes both scientific objects and artistic works, such as a 17^th century silk dress scented with lavender to ward off plague and a examples of historical and modern personal protective equipment for medical workers.

Falcons: The Art of the Hunt

National Museum of Asian Art (Washington, DC, USA)

15 January–17 July 2022       

In this forthcoming exhibition, a selection of paintings and objects from ancient Egypt to China displays the widespread interest and respect for falcons across time and cultures. The Art of the Hunt includes imagery from ancient Egypt, when falcons were associated with Horus; and from the eighth century on, when falcons were trained to become skillful hunters in the Islamic world, Byzantine empire, and China.

Feeding Black: Community, Power & Place

Museum of London Docklands (London, UK)

Through 17 July 2022

Feeding Black explores the central role of food in Black enterprise and identity in South East London. Through recipes, objects, and stories, the exhibition highlights four African- and Caribbean-owned businesses: Livity Plant Based Cuisine, African Cash & Carry, Junior’s market stall, and Zeret Kitchen. Feeding Black also showcases photography by Jonas Martinez and an original soundscape by Kayode ‘Kayodeine’ Gomez.

Fire and Vine: The Story of Glass and Wine

Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, NY, USA)

Through 31 December 2022

This exhibition explores the interrelated histories of glass and wine, especially how glass has been integral to the production and consumption of wine for thousands of years. Visitors will view collection items highlighting this relationship throughout time, like a 2,000-year-old fragment of cameo glass depicting a grape harvest, a still-sealed bottle of wine found in a shipwreck off the coast of England, and dozens of wine glasses from around the world. There is a particular focus the Finger Lakes region of New York State, which has been home to the glass and wine industries for over 150 years. This exhibition was curated by Katherine Larson, Curator of Ancient Glass at the Corning Musuem of Glass.

Hyundai Commission: Anicka Yi: In Love With The World

Tate Modern (London, UK)

Through 6 February 2022

This installation is an experimental work which explores the merging of technology and biology. The artist, Anicka Yi, invites visitors to consider their role in the ecosystems in which they live through the dissolution of boundaries between plants, animals, microbes, and machines. Yi has installed floating machines (aerobes) in the exhibition space to encourage thought about ways in which machines can inhabit a world without clear distinctions between the living and machines. The installation also includes scentscapes associated with the history of the installation space, Bankside Power Station, at specific points in history.

Life in a Cup: Coffee Culture in the Islamic World

British Museum (London, UK)

Through 18 September 2022

Life in a Cup presents the story of coffee in parts of the Islamic world, allowing visitors to explore several coffee traditions. The exhibition traces the introduction of coffee into Istanbul by the early 16^th century, explores centuries of coffeehouse culture in the Islamic world and beyond, and highlights the beautiful material culture of coffee.

Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World

National Museum of Natural History (Washington, DC, USA)

Through October 2022

Outbreak provides visitors the opportunity to explore the relationship between the environment, people, animals, and microbes, and how professionals identify and respond to infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, Ebola virus, influenza, Zika virus, and others. Visitors can engage with interactive simulations to think like an epidemiologist, reflect on personal stories from survivors and frontline healthcare workers, and, through a multi-player game, work cooperatively with other visitors to contain an outbreak before it spreads further. Regular webinars are scheduled to compliment the exhibition; the schedule is available online, as well as recordings of past events.

Worlds of Opiates

Amsterdam Central Station (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

December 2021

In this collaboration between Poppi Museum, Utrecht University (especially Stephen Snelders and Intoxicating Spaces), Inventors Guild, and Corné van der Stelt, visitors can experience how opium has been viewed and used over time. Artists and scholars worked together to translate the history of opium into an exhibition featuring visual and digital components. This pop-up exhibition won’t be up long, so be sure to visit it in the heart of Amsterdam in December.

If you’d like to feature a museum exhibition or collection on the Around the Table, please email Sarah Kernan.

By Sarah Peters Kernan

This holiday season, many museums internationally are highlighting the histories of food, medicine, and science in special exhibitions. If your travel plans take you to any of the cities below in December or January, consider stopping by an exhibit. Be sure to check the websites for full exhibit descriptions, as well as visitor information such as hours, fees, and directions. We also welcome readers to share your trips to any museums and exhibits of interest to the Recipes Project community on Twitter or Facebook!

What Why How We Eat

Anchorage Museum (Anchorage, AK, USA)

Through 12 January 2020

What Why How We Eat tells the changing story of food culture in Alaska—from the subsistence whale hunt in Point Hope to the Halal market in Anchorage—through filmed interviews, art installations, utensils, tools, recipes and food. The exhibition highlights multiple cultures and food traditions within Alaska communities, providing an interactive space for learning about how food is produced, preserved and shared within Alaska’s diverse communities in both rural and urban areas. Food-oriented public programming and a book of food essays with companion cookbook of Alaskana recipes for dishes commonly made in Alaska’s kitchens are among the ways the What Why How We Eat project connects Alaska food culture with other cultures around the world.

The Art of Healing: Australian Indigenous Bush Medicine (International Tour)

The Berlin Museum of Medical History, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Berlin, Germany)

Through 2 February 2020

The Art of Healing: Australian Indigenous Bush Medicine, an exhibition developed by the Melbourne Medical History Museum, is on its last stop on an international tour after first on display in 2018-2019. Prints and paintings by Indigenous Australian artists are juxtaposed with historic specimens from the Berlin Museum of Medical History’s permanent display. The contemporary works of art depict healing practices and medicines from the artists’ own Indigenous communities and cultures. Through their depictions of medicinal flora, the artists celebrate a long tradition of healing which predates Western medicine by tens of thousands of years. This exhibition was curated by Jacqueline Healy, University of Melbourne Medical History Museum and Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum Senior Curator.

Food Fit for Kings County: The Culinary History of Brooklyn

Brooklyn Public Library (Brooklyn, NY, USA)

Through 3 January 2020

This exhibition at the Brooklyn Public Library examines the borough’s social and cultural history through food and drink. The exhibition displays a variety of sources, including menus, images, books, and other material objects. Visitors can see a range of cultures, cuisines, and exhibited objects across Brooklyn’s history, including 1896 letterhead from the India Wharf Brewing Company, images from picket lines at Ebinger’s Bakery in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, and menus displaying the juxtaposition of immigrant food cultures, such as one advertising “Sheesh Kabab” alongside spaghetti and meatballs. For a preview of Food Fit for Kings County, be sure to visit the exhibit’s website before your visit.

Resetting the Table: Food and Our Changing Tastes

Peabody Museum of Archeology & Ethnography at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA)

Through 28 November 2021

The Peabody Museum’s new exhibition, Resetting the Table, explores food choices and eating habits in the United States, including the sometimes hidden but always important ways in which our tables are shaped by cultural, historical, political, and technological influences. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a 1910 dinner for Harvard freshmen featuring Cotuit Cocktail, beef, imported champagne, an elaborate Eastern European cake called “Mocca Tree,” and cigarettes. Visitors not only encounter this meal set on a great oak dining table, but also explore the historical and cultural roots of each set of foods on the menu, and the privileged context of their presentation. The exhibition objects, culled from nine institutions, reveal the long history of many iconic American foods, across multiple cultures and thousands of years. These objects will include prehistoric oyster shells, turkey bones, Budweiser cans excavated from Harvard Yard, and an intricately fashioned nineteenth-century eel pot from New England. Stunning Central American tools and ceramics will signal the New World origins of corn and chocolate. The foodstuffs introduced to North America from other parts of the world include sugar, coffee, rice, and grape wine. Visitors also encounter a life-sized diorama of an early twentieth-century kitchen showcasing the preparation of foods before it is consumed and introduces objects of food preparation from around the world. This exhibition was guest curated by Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History.

Brewing Up Chicago: How Beer Transformed a City

Exhibition organized by the Chicago Brewseum, hosted by the Field Museum (Chicago, IL, USA)

Through 5 July 2020

Brewing Up Chicago traces the growth of the city in the nineteenth century through the lens of its brewing industry and the immigrant community who built it. The German-American community in Chicago, initially regarded as ethnic outsiders, gradually came to be viewed as respected citizens, due in no small part to their contributions in brewing. The exhibition consists of four sections: The Raw Ingredients (1833-1850); The Mash (1851-1870); Fermentation (1871-1885); and Maturation (1885-1893). Each section details Chicago’s development, the German-American brewers’ experiences, and the stages of the brewing process. Brewing Up Chicago illustrates how beer is more than just a beverage; it is a strong cultural force capable of building community and making change.

Revisiting Arcimboldo

La Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie (Lyon, France)

Through 31 May 2020

This immersive visual and auditory experience celebrates the paintings of the Italian Renaissance artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. His portraits play a visual game with the viewer, merging food and portraiture. This exhibition features Arcimboldo’s works revisited by contemporary artists in a surreal and surprising experience. Revisiting Arcimboldo is displayed in the newly-opened La Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie in Lyon. This space, housed in the restored Grand Hôtel-Dieu, a former hospital, is devoted to the theme of gastronomy at the crossroads of food and health. The space houses permanent exhibitions on the history of Lyon’s gastronomy, a digital space presenting the gastronomic meal of the French, terroirs and the making of meals, temporary exhibitions, workshops, conferences, and more.

Making Marvels: Science & Splendor at the Courts of Europe

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY, USA)

Through 1 March 2020

In early modern Europe, lavish spending, displays of precious metals, and the possession of artistic, scientific, and technological innovations conveyed power and status. These innovations were often highlighted in elaborate court entertainments. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition, Making Marvels: Science and Splendor at the Courts of Europe explores the complex ways in which the objects collected and displayed by early modern European monarchs expressed these rulers’ ability to govern. The exhibition features approximately 170 objects, including clocks, automata, furniture, scientific instruments, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, print media, and more, from The Met collection and over fifty lenders. Some of the objects on display include the largest flawless natural green diamond in the world (weighing 41 carats and in its original 18th-century setting), the alchemistic table bell of Emperor Rudolf II, and a fountain bearing the coat of arms of the Madruzzo family of Trento to be used to spurt wine or water during court festivities. The exhibition will be divided into four sections dedicated to the main object types featured in these displays: precious metalwork, Kunstkammer objects, princely tools, and self-moving clockworks or automata. The exhibition site includes links to videos showing the movement and functionality of several Making Marvels objects. Making Marvels is organized by Wolfram Koeppe, the Marina Kellen French Curator in The Met’s Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

A Delight for the Senses: The Still Life

Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Through 15 March 2020

Emerging in the seventeenth century in the Netherlands, the still life genre documented the objects and symbols of wealth and status among the flourishing merchant class. This exhibition, A Delight for the Senses: The Still Life, celebrates this genre, exploring nearly 250 years of the tradition from the seventeenth century to America’s Gilded Age. Featuring items as diverse as foods, flowers, animals, scientific instruments, books, and more, the arrangements were not only aesthetically pleasing, but also symbolic of the moral, religious, and social structures of the time. The exhibition features the museum’s first seventeenth-century still life painting, a recent bequest from the late Drue Heinz, as well as loans from the Detroit Institute of Arts and several local collectors. A Delight for the Senses is curated by Akemi May, Assistant Curator, Fine Arts, Carnegie Museum of Art.

If you’d like to feature a museum exhibition or collection on the Around the Table, please email Sarah Kernan.