Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism by Anke Van Wagenberg

Working at the American Federation of Arts is just about as exciting as an art curator’s job can be, with lots of, yes curating exhibitions, publishing catalogs, and related travel (while living in beautiful Talbot County). Bringing art to a wide public has been the AFA’s mission as the 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 around the world, publishing exhibition catalogues featuring important scholarly research, and developing educational programs.  I look forward to regularly contributing to the Spy, either by contributing articles or podcast reviews and artist interviews.

I recently attended the Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism exhibition opening, first at the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, and now on view at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN, until May 4th. The AFA-Chrysler organized exhibition will continue on to the Cincinnati Art Museum, OH and lastly to the Seattle Art Museum. Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism explores the intersections of art, gastronomy, and national identity in fin-de-siècle France. The exhibition showcases the work of artists such as Claude Monet, Eva Gonzalès, Victor Gilbert, Paul Gauguin, and Jules Dalou who examined the nation’s unique relationship with food. The bounty of France’s agriculture and the skill of its chefs had long helped to define its strength and position on the international stage.

This self-image as the world’s culinary capital became all the more important in the late nineteenth century as the country grappled with war, political instability, imperialism, and industrialization. In this climate, France’s culinary traditions signaled notions of its refinement, fortitude, and ingenuity while they also exposed fractures that destabilized national identity. From cultivation to consumption, food was central to notions of glory but also to those of collective pain.

The transformation of the culinary world was a natural theme for artists committed to depicting daily circumstances. Food was the most quotidian of subjects yet also one uniquely suited to considering the state of the nation. Featuring approximately seventy works of art, Farm to Table showcases representations of sumptuous ingredients and severe privation, bountiful meals and agrarian crises. The works highlight the possibilities and precariousness of France’s colonial and industrial projects; the evolving norms of gender and class; the tenuous relationship between Paris and the provinces; and shifting understandings of science and the environment. Depictions of markets and gardens, farmers, chefs, and restaurants expressed cultural anxieties and aspirations. Beginning with the 1870 Prussian siege of Paris (and the resultant food crisis) and continuing through the 1890s, the exhibition spans the age of Impressionism and provides a new way to consider the era’s depictions of modern life at the
intersection of art, food, and social politics.

An accompanying catalog Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism, (2024), was edited by curators Andrew Eschelbacher and Lloyd DeWitt, with contributions by Allison Deutsch, Simon Kelly, Marni Kessler, and Shalini Le Gall, Published by Yale University Press in association with the Chrysler Museum of Art and the American Federation of Arts.

Anke Van Wagenberg, PhD, is Senior Curator & Head of International Collaborations at the American Federation of Arts in New York and lives in Talbot County, Maryland.