Food in museum exhibitions

One of the things you do when traveling is to visit museums and since my true love and I are in London, we are visiting museums.  While walking through Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum I was struck by how often the objects were connected to food.

I first noticed this in the Ashmolean’ Egyptian collection.  The Ashmolean is not the biggest museum in the world but their Egyptian, Babylonian, and pre-Babylonian objects are fabulous.  Since only those physical objects that have survived 4,000 years are available to be showcased in museum cabinets, it’s not surprising that most of the objects were originally for religious veneration, personal adornment, or eating.  Many of the objects were bowls, utensils, and vessels for storing food – both for active use and use in the afterlife.

The camels shown above represent something else.  They are a representation of the trade that provided the backbone of the economy and brought much of the food that people needed for sustenance.  It’s not clear why someone was inspired to make that representation but perhaps we’re looking at the beginnings of what we now call “art.”

Further on in the museum was an exhibit on “East Meets West” in a room sponsored by record label mogul and producer Ahmet Ertegun. Part of the exhibit focused on the spice trade of the 16th and 17th centuries. One of the more intriguing artifacts was the cup on the left.  A coconut, quite an unusual item in 17th century England, is intricately carved into this cup.  This and other objects in the cabinet celebrated the novelty and importance of the spice trade.

I was becoming intrigued by the idea of interpreting our visit in terms of food history when we entered a room full of Dutch portraits and still lifes.  I’d estimate that about a third of the paintings were still lifes with a food oriented theme and while I understand that from one perspective, these paintings are about shapes, light, composition, and technique but they are also about the food itself.  This is what was available to the painters and perhaps more importantly, their patrons.

The oysters, bread, and olives in the van Es above look absolutely delicious and all would have been common in the Netherlands but that lemon would have been pretty rare and expensive at the time. In this paintings, and most of the others, the food being painted was a signifier of the patron’s wealth (and standing).

It is very easy to get overwhelmed in a museum and I’ve found that trying to experience the museum through a particular framework can be helpful.  When we visited the Imperial War Museum, I took the same approach and again food provided a useful lens.

The museum began as a museum of The Great War, but as time has shown us that was insufficient.  World War II, the Cold War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, and the War on Terror have all expanded the museum’s scope.  A recent renovation features a heavy reliance on multimedia exhibits but has also added a considerable amount of useful interpretation.

actively sought out references to food and was not disappointed.  The exhibits, which are surprisingly not as jingoistic as they could be did deal with the problems of feeding soldiers and feeding families at home.

Various exhibits touched on the difficulties of providing nutrition for the soldiers while others dealt with rationing, shortages, and price controls at home.  A special exhibit in the WWII section showcased the difficulties of a single London family, including exhortations to grow their own vegetables and help shoulder the burden of shortages.

Both museums were great in their own ways, but I found that by applying a particular filter that I started to learn things I might not have otherwise recognized.  For example, I’m fairly familiar with the 17th century spice trade but hadn’t encountered something like that coconut cup before, which serves as a symbol of wealth/status.  Seeing the cup and focusing on food as a framework got me thinking about the still life paintings in a nearby room in a new way.  And this entire topic made me much more sensitive to food-related exhibits in the Imperial War Museum.