Modern Meals: Remaking American Foods from Farm to Kitchen, an exhibition that explores how technology and design remade the places where food was produced, sold, cooked and eaten from the turn of the century into the post-1945 period. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, is on view in The Wolfsonian Teaching Gallery at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University from October 12, 2011 through the Fall 2011 semester. The October 12 opening will be a part of The Frost Art Museum’s Target Wednesday After Hours celebration.
The Wolfsonian–Florida International University presents Modern Meals: Remaking American Foods from Farm to Kitchen, an exhibition that explores how technology and design remade the places where food was produced, sold, cooked and eaten from the turn of the century into the post-1945 period. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, is on view in The Wolfsonian Teaching Gallery at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University from October 12, 2011 through the Fall 2011 semester. The October 12 opening will be a part of The Frost Art Museum’s Target Wednesday After Hours celebration.
More than a century ago, people in the United States began eating foods that, instead of being grown and prepared at home or nearby, were mass-produced and distributed on national and global scales. Images and artifacts from the Wolfsonian collection illustrate the movement of food from the field, to the factory, supermarket, and kitchen table, in order to explore how modern technology, design, and business practices created new meanings for food and eating in this era.
The more than three dozen items on display will include posters, prints, and advertisements, as well as objects such as toasters, cookware, and tableware, all of which invite visitors to consider how commercialization has shaped modern American foodways. These objects reveal how the values of industrial efficiency and design shaped the landscapes and intimate spaces of food production and consumption, but also how—even amidst these changes—American culture continued to idealize generations-old practices in the fields and the home.
For this project, the museum has collaborated with Professor April Merleaux, Department of History, FIU, who will teach a course that addresses the history of food in the United States. “There’s been growing interest in local foods and questions of nutrition, health and sustainability over the last decade,” Professor Merleaux said. “What people may not realize is that our current system for producing, buying, and eating food has roots that stretch back for more than a century. It turns out that the period covered by Wolfsonian collections coincides with one of the most important moments in the development of modern, mass-marketed food.”
Modern Meals is the fourth exhibition presented by The Wolfsonian with The Frost Art Museum’s collaboration and co-curated by Jonathan Mogul, the Mellon Coordinator of Academic Programs at The Wolfsonian. Supported with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Wolfsonian Teaching Gallery provides an opportunity for FIU faculty members to work with museum staff in developing exhibitions from the Wolfsonian collection that serve as resources for teaching and learning, and advance scholarly research.
Also on view during The Frost Art Museum’s Target Wednesday After Hours:
Magdalena Fernandez: 2iPM009
October 12, 2011–January 8, 2012
Magdalena Fernandez’s video installation 2iPM009 brings geometric abstraction to a new level of expression. During the past decade, the Venezuela-born artist (1964) has developed a body of kinetic sculptures and videos; the latter incorporates sound and movement of lines and colors.
The Florida Artist Series: Humberto Calzada: The Fire Next Time
October 12, 2011–December 5, 2011
Cuban-American artist Humberto Calzada, one of the most renowned artists of his generation, will present an exhibition of recent works on the idea of Fire—the fire of war, the fire of light, the fire of passion and emotions with its metaphorical properties that are both destructive and regenerative.
Approaching its 35th anniversary in 2012, The Frost Art Museum opened its current 46,000-square-foot state of the art building in November, 2008. Over 85,000 people have visited The Museum in its new building since its opening in November, 2008. Admission to The Museum is always free. The Frost is an AAM accredited museum and Smithsonian affiliate and is located at 10975 SW 17th St across from the Blue garage and adjacent to the Wertheim Performing Arts Center on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus. Hours of operation are Tuesday through Saturday 10am–5pm and Sunday noon-5pm. Closed on Mondays and most legal holidays. For more information, please visit thefrost.fiu.edu or call 305.348.2890. Find The Frost Art Museum on Twitter (twitter.com/frostartmuseum) and Facebook (facebook.com).
The Wolfsonian is a museum, library, and research center that uses objects to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design, to explore what it means to be modern, and to tell the story of social, historical, and technological changes that have transformed our world. The collections comprise approximately 120,000 objects from the period of 1885 to 1945—the height of the Industrial Revolution to the end of the Second World War—in a variety of media including furniture; industrial-design objects; works in glass, ceramics, and metal; rare books; periodicals; ephemera; works on paper; paintings; textiles; and medals.
The Wolfsonian is located at 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL. Admission is $7 for adults; $5 for seniors, students, and children age 6 -12; and free for Wolfsonian members, State University System
of Florida staff and students with ID, and children under six. The museum is open Monday, Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday from noon-6pm; Thursday and Friday from noon-9pm; and is closed on Wednesday. Contact us at 305.531.1001 or visit us online at www.wolfsonian.org for further information.
The Wolfsonian receives ongoing support from The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council; the William J. and Tina Rosenberg Foundation; United Airlines, the Official Airline of The Wolfsonian–FIU; and Bacardi USA, Inc.