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Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism
On View
October 11, 2024 — January 5, 2025
Location
Special Exhibition Gallery
Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism explores France’s relationship with food at the end of the nineteenth century through paintings and sculptures by leading artists. French cuisine had long been viewed as a reflection of the nation’s identity and a source of popular pride. Yet in the decades following the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), artists depicted the growing, cooking, transporting, serving and, of course, eating of food as a means of highlighting the economic and social instabilities of this tumultuous moment in French history. Ubiquitous scenes of farms, markets, and restaurants, offer gateways for considering the political, social, and cultural factors shaping France on the eve of the modern era.
Featuring more than fifty works, the exhibition showcases famous Impressionist artists, such as Marie Bracquemond, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, as well as the works of leading figures in the French Salon, such as Eugene Boudin, Jean Béraud, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Victor Gabriel Gilbert, and Léon Augustin Lhermitte. Together their works form a resonant picture of the intersection between French cuisine and period social discourse, with the exhibition organized thematically to chart the cultivation, harvest, purchase, and enjoyment of food.
Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts (AFA) and Chrysler Museum of Art. The AFA is a leader in traveling exhibitions internationally. A nonprofit organization founded in 1909, the AFA is dedicated to enriching the public’s experience and understanding of the visual arts through organizing and touring art exhibitions for presentation in museums worldwide, publishing exhibition catalogues featuring important scholarly research, and developing educational programs.
Exhibition Programming
Explore French culture, food, history, and other themes from 'Farm to Table' through these upcoming events!
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The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue published by Yale University Press. Featuring an introduction by curator Andrew Eschelbacher, and thematic essays by leading scholars, Lloyd DeWitt, Allison Detsch, Simon Kelly, Marni Reva Kessler, and Shalini Le Gall, the catalogue further contextualizes the ways in which images of food speak to larger contemporary currents in French society and visual culture.
The exhibition is generously supported by Monique Schoen Warshaw. Additional support has been provided by Betsy S. Barbanell, the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas 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.
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