Critical Eating: Tasting Museum Stories on Restaurant Menus

Abstract

This article explores exhibition-inspired themed menus in museum restaurants as a form of “critically engaged interpretation” (Meszros 2008). By proposing that themed menus in museum restaurants can connect some “interpretive communities” (Fish, 1980)—in this article, the focus is on foodies—with the museum content through food, the analysis reveals the forms of belonging, the hierarchies of taste and the interpretive modes which are afforded to museum visitors by culinary experiences. The article discusses the themed menus in relation to broader shifts in museum interpretation, informed by demands of the “new museology” (Vergo, 1989) for inclusivity, dialogue and engagement. Critical in this transformation is the process of interpretation, based on a dialogic relation between the voices in the museum and the visitors. To be relevant to contemporary audiences, museums are providing various entry points to their collections, including culinary encounters. By engaging in a closed reading of themed menus developed in restaurants at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) and the Seattle Art Museum, the article discusses the interpretive practices developed around food.

Keywords:

• Thematic menus
• museum restaurants
• food
• foodies
• critically engaged interpretation
• interpretive communities

Notes

1. This article is part of a special issue of Legacy Magazine: The Journal of the National Association for Interpretation, dedicated to “Interpreting Food.”

2. The focus of this article is on the North American museological context. Each national context has its own set of histories, discourses and practices that shape the contemporary museological landscape and my research is being conducted in the North American context. Therefore, my examples have been selected to fit with my context and the theoretical framework that define it.

3. Among living history museums, Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia has a long tradition of food and foodways programming. Most living history museums in North America, such as the Plimoth Plantation (Plymouth, Maryland), Coggeshall Farm Museum (Bristol, Rhode Island) or the Upper Canada Village (Morrisburg, Ontario) have a significant food focus in their interpretation practices, tied to the agricultural programs of the specific institutions.

4. Historic sites such as the Campbell House Museums (Toronto), Fort York National Historic Site (Toronto), and Shelbourne Farms (Vermont) engage their visitors with food demonstrations, historic cookery classes and products made on site by volunteers. Other museums, which focus on specific historical moments, also engage with food programing (for example, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York City;

5. The food museums is a genre of museums dedicated entirely to food—food museums tend to be small sites focused on one type of food or a brand. For example: Spam Museum (Austin, Minnesota), the National Mustard Museum (Middleton, Wisconsin) and the Jell-O Gallery (Le Roy, New York). In addition, several museums focus on the history and culture of food (for example, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, New Orleans; and the Museum of Food and Drink, New York City).

6. Eco-museums, a type of museums originating in France in 1970s, focus on the identity of a place and the involvement of the local community. Currently, eco-museums exist in many European countries, but also in Asia and North America (for example, Kalyna Country, Central Alberta, Canada; Ak-Chin Him-Dak Eco-museum and Archive, Maripoca, Arizona; the Ecomuseum Zoo, Montreal, Quebec).

7. Food is a popular theme for exhibitions in museums of art, history, civilization and science. Large blockbuster exhibitions centered on food have been organized by the Art Institute of Chicago (Art and Appetite), American Museum of Natural History (Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture) and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Ferran Adria: Notes on Creativity). The National Museum of American History (Smithsonian) has dedicated a permanent exhibition to food and its cultural history in the United States (FOOD: Transforming the American Table, 1950–2000).

8. Following these observations, the next step in my research project will be the development of a visitor research methodology to assess the visitors’ experience of the museum restaurant.

9. Fish uses “writing” to refer to the reading of any text—for him, meaning is developed in the process of reading a text and the use of “writing” gives agency to those who experience a text, who, according to him, are writing an interpretation as they are reading.

10. The AGO includes three other eating spaces: Café AGO, a self-serve café located on the lower level of the museum; the Espresso Bar, serving coffee, tea and dessert in one of the prime locations in the museum, Galleria Italia; and Norma Ridley’s Members Lounge, which serves a sit down lunch to AGO members in the Gallery’s historic first home, the Grange.

11. Executive chefs at FRANK: Anne Yarymowich (2008–2013), Jeff Dueck (2013–2014), Ryan Wilson-Lall (2014–2015), Renée Bellefeuille (2015–current).

12. One of the main critical issue in museum studies and museum practice is the relation between museums, especially those with ethnographic collections, and their colonial history—most conversations take on issues such as the history of collecting, practices of display, lack of self-reflexivity of museums or the politics of repatriation. For further discussion on this topic see: Bennet, T. 1995. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge; Bennet, T. 2004. Pasts beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism. London: Routledge; Karp, I. and S.D. Lavine, eds. 1991. Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press; Edwards, E., C. Gosden, and R. B. Phillips, eds. 2006. Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture. New York: Berg.