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Our Global Kitchen: Food, Culture, Nature

A couple weeks ago The American Museum of Natural History sent me a press preview invitation for their new exhibit, now open to the public, called Our Global Kitchen. With my fingers on the pulse of food in one way or another these days (i.e. all over the place, which I just l-o-v-e), I knew this should not be missed. It did not disappoint.

Our Global Kitchen is one of the most information-dense exhibits I have visited, filled with details on historical kitchens both simple and grand; ancient growing and eating practices; meals from around the world (and different époques); various solutions to the very real and worsening issue of food scarcity; alternating food demonstrations, and more. Generally, everything food.

Since we all eat and have a gazillion relationships to food, I thought it relevant to share and encourage you to find out more for yourselves. Go see Our Global Kitchen and bring your friends, your family, so you can chew over the layers, together.

Container gardens on display. Samples of watercress, mustard greens, thyme varieties, and more were available to taste.

This piece really struck me.  Seems criminal that the "hard and flavorless" is what is widely available.

The figures detailing meat production are dismaying, astounding. On right, future-forward ways of growing more to feed more.

Yup, worms. Maguey larvae were a delicacy in the Aztec court, and remain popular today.

The great Aztec marketplace circa 1500 - insects and lizards as popular meat sources, available for trade

These items are really the tip of the iceberg... the exhibit touched briefly on the truth behind these figures.

This towering display shows what an American family of four wastes in one year

I have shared what might seem like a considerable bit, but the exhibit delves into much more. It is a fairly comprehensive look at all our identities through food: where we have been, and where we are headed. Appropriate for all ages, allow at least a few hours to take it all in. When you've finished, go find some great food (and maybe a drink or two) to share as you ponder....

Design and the Modern Kitchen

It's nice to extricate yourself from the routines of the day and actually dip into the awesomeness of what New York City has to offer. I was lucky enough to do so a couple weeks ago, when the hubby and I took on a late-day adventure to MOMA. Design and the Modern Kitchen is why we went, and it lived up to be a pretty great experience. (all photos shot with my iphone)

Irving Penn, David Shrigley

Based on the information I'd gathered from skimming MOMA's website, I thought I'd see more physical kitchen layouts and less art which made reference to the domestic bastion. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to encounter a range of products, politics, and even old film footage. Included were various examples of the earliest days of marketing, interesting (and graphically beautiful) propaganda pieces, and quirky and famous design objects, spanning 9 decades!

The exhibit explores the kitchen as it enters the glorious industrialized era. This, in the worldwide realm, as much as from the American point-of-view.  I found it semi-ironic (because I love being in my own kitchen cooking up all kinds of crazy & fun things, while also considering myself pretty liberated and cosmopolitan, like most contemporary women) to see the prevalence of women in THEIR element. In many instances, alien or cumbersome contraptions seemed effortlessly - or so the picture stills would have you believe - handled by thin, prim, blond young ladies..... a bit surreal. Anyone in a kitchen ad has always served as the archtype to aspire to, but seeing these photos of past gadget/design promotions, all too consumeristic and a bit too perfect, made me a little prickly inside.

Joe Steinmetz

 
I found the propaganda pieces particularly interesting. The U.S. did at one point widely promote certain virtues (during times of war) like raising your own food, being thrift-minded, and having a vegetable-rich diet.

Jan Lewitt

George Him

L.N. Britton

There was a sense of consciousness in this portion of the exhibit that appealed to me, albeit for different reasons than was urged then. I find that these values speak to a worldwide community, which is increasingly important if we're all to survive on this precious and delicate planet (yes, I'm wrapped up in food politics, but how can you not be in this time of being alive?) These propaganda pieces also threaded into them the contemporary foodie communities cropping up everywhere: that someone who loves truly good food is intrinsically tied to eating local, whole food diets, and embodies an overall principle of frugality and resourcefulness (nose-to-tail eating, anyone?) Never mind that it just tastes better...

Abram Games

There were implements on display from various points in history, whether appropriate to industrial or home kitchens. I had to laugh at seeing my own pots and pans in a glass vitrine - remarkable and humerous....

Funny also to see the first incarnations of tupperware - those clouded and weathered, round plastic shapes, lit by important spotlights. Seeing these juxtaposed with more overtly "beautiful" objects was an indication of where we have been, a testament certainly to design, as well as the utility of *stuff* in the kitchen realm.

I would highly recommend this show to anyone. It is viewable until March 14, 2011.