I create salon dinners based on the political and economic conditions of notable periods in art history (so far, London in the 1730s; Tehran in the 1970s; Paris 1800-1815; Moscow 1917-1925; and New York 1870-1910). These dinners have several courses of food recreated from historical recipes, and each course is paired with a short lecture. Although they’re theorized and informative, dinners are also a way to reflect on the fact that art is a social industry. As all of us who have been to opening receptions or art fairs or fundraising galas know, art is about parties, and parties have snacks! If artists and their supporters are making what will become history-defining decisions over shared meals, the question bears asking, what do they eat?
I began this project because I was curious about how we got the art worlds that we have today. We all have complaints about the global contemporary art market and the institutions that support it. We have a history of social, racial, and class biases that are remade and reinforced every day. Exclusion in the art world is structural and violent, but it rests on what might be the most enduring myth of our time: the neutrality of the museum. We still tell ourselves stories about the value of taste and connoisseurship, and we tell ourselves other stories about the naturalness of free market capitalism, but those things are neither innately good nor inevitable. Other art worlds are possible, and other art worlds have existed.
Photo by Liz Ligon
Brooklyn, NY
Gilded Age New York: A Wealth Inequality Dinner
January 20, 2019
Menu
Huitres—Wellfleet
Potage—Soupe aux lentiles
Poussin—Muskee Sindh, Choux de Bruxelles à l’indienne
Rôt—Filet de bœuf, Pommes de terre à la Delmonico
Entrée Froid—Céleri, Têtes d’asperges en conserve en petites bottes
Glace—Jell-O
The Gilded Age (1870-1910) was an age, much like our own, defined by rapidly rising wealth inequality. Massive fortunes, made in advancing technology fields like electricity, steel, and photography, funded the United States’s first large-scale philanthropic institutions, including art museums. At the same time, a series of ethnological museums were also founded, like the Bucks County Historical Society and the American Museum of Natural History. The tension between the two 19th century museological methods, ethnological (featuring “peasants” and the colonized) and artistic (covering European traditions), comprised Gilded Age display systems for craft objects. Gilded Age newspapers expressed national anxieties also experienced today: labor strikes, financial panics, large waves of immigration, and technology developing at a pace far too fast for government regulation. In one of the key periods of US economic development, museums decided which objects were art and which were artifact.
This dinner was held at Cabinet Magazine HQ and featured guest lectures by Sarah Lohman, Amy Schiller, and Dania Rajendra. The kitchen was run by Christine Elliott, Cristina Marcelo, Sarah K. Williams, and Emily Gaynor.
Photo by Christine Elliott
Brooklyn, NY
Soviet Salon: Dinner on the Centenary of the Russian Revolution
November 7, 2017
Menu
Vodka
Ossetra caviar and blini
Cabbage soup
Kasha with sauerkraut
Gefilte fish and cabbage rolls
Apple cake and Soviet-style tea
This dinner, inspired by communal meals in Moscow and Petrograd during the first years following the Russian Revolution (roughly 1917-1921), will facilitate group discussion about the wholesale reorganization of art and life during those tumultuous years. The Russian Revolution was a chance for artists to destroy the hated old order of aristocratic patronage and build a bold new society. They moved from the easel to the street, endeavoring to shape the emerging consciousness of the proletariat while arguing fiercely amongst themselves about what exactly “proletariat art” should be. Arts organizations like Proletkult (Proletarian cultural organization), Narkompros (the Commissariat of Enlightenment), and RABIS (the All-Russian Union of Art Workers) formed and evolved in quick time, working through new ideas and striving for cultural hegemony. In this rapidly changing art world, how did artists make work, and how did they make money? When given the chance to self-organize, which models did they choose (or invent)? In a time of widespread shortages, how did they manage to eat, and what did they eat when they could?
This dinner was held at Cabinet Magazine HQ and featured a guest lecture by Rebecca Ariel Porte. The kitchen was run by Christine Elliott and Cristina Marcelo.
Los Angeles, CA
Napoleon Salon: Dinner in the First Empire
February 4, 2017
Menu
Gougères
Tomato consommé
Salmon in hollandaise with asparagus
Lemon sorbet
Medallions of beef in sauce espagnole with haricots verts
Green salad
Pastries—Napoleon mille-feuilles, marzipan petit fours, lemon meringue tarts
This salon, inspired by state banquets of Napoleon Bonaparte in his Tuileries palace, explored how art functions under an authoritarian regime.
Napoleon Bonaparte, a combative, proud, and popular leader, came to power in November of 1799, backed in a surprise coup by fellow reformists looking to make France great again. Over the next 15 years of his reign, he ruthlessly campaigned to extend the French empire, establishing his family members as dynastic rulers of his newly-won assets. Napoleon was a master media strategist: he wrote bulletins to publicize his victories, commissioned favorable newspaper coverage, censored all anti-government voices, and produced propaganda on a massive scale. He especially relied on the spectacle and luxury of the imperial court to consolidate his new position in the world. Funded by the spoils of conquest, his ever-expanding government payroll employed artists and workshops that created statues and paintings of the emperor as well as decorative pieces marked with his personal brand. In this salon dinner, we discussed the pageantry of the Napoleonic Empire and the people who produced it. Who were they? What did they make? How were they paid?
This dinner was held at Thank You for Coming in Los Angeles. The kitchen was run by Cynthia Su, Laura Noguera, Jonathan Robert, Carole Frances Lung, and Lauren Ross. Pastries were baked by Cayetano Talavera. Menus and stationery were letterpressed by Lauren Ross.
