Farm To Table Exhibit @ SAM

Sourced, prepared, savored, and shared, food nourishes the body, feeds the soul, sustains culture—and inevitably appears in art. This is as true today as it was in France during the tumultuous decades following the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), when food—its cultivation, preparation, presentation, and consumption—took center stage in painting and sculpture. France’s skilled chefs and abundant agriculture had long defined its strength and position on the global stage, but in the late 19th century, food culture became a mirror of a nation in transition. Featuring more than 50 works by artists ranging from Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro, to Eugène Boudin, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and Victor Gabriel Gilbert, this exhibition looks back at the Age of Impressionism through the lens of French culinary tradition. Portrayals of municipal markets and country gardens, provincial farmers and Parisian cooks, glittering restaurants and their fashionable patrons, and tables both laden and wanting reveal how the country’s identity as the world’s gastronomic capital became amplified as it grappled with war, political instability, industrialization, imperialism, and shifting social dynamics. In this climate, anything having to do with cuisine signaled uniquely French refinement, fortitude, and ingenuity, even as it exposed fractures that destabilized national identity. Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Chrysler Museum of Art. The exhibition is generously supported by Martha MacMillan and Monique Schoen Warshaw. Additional support has been provided by Betsy S. Barbanell, Lee White Galvis, Allan Green, Clare E. McKeon and the Clare McKeon Charitable Fund, Betsy Pinover Schiff, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, and the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Event Links

Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/3293797-0

Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3293797-2

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