Use all 5 senses at museum’s ‘Global Kitchen’
Most museums are designed for the eyes. You walk (and walk), you look, you read — and heaven forbid you touch anything!
Not so with a new exhibit opening next Friday at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Step into “Global Kitchen” and you’ll find yourself invited to use all five senses — including taste.
The exhibit, the first foodthemed exhibit at the downtown museum since “Chocolate: The Exhibition” in 2005, runs through July 9.
Created by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 2013, the exhibit is structured by theme: Grow, Cook, Eat, Taste, Transport and Celebrate.
But one of the most popular stops is bound to be the Demonstration Kitchen. Food won’t be cooked there, but it will be sampled daily. One day it might be kimchi. Another day, milk chocolate vs. dark. Sugar content of foods might be explored on another day.
“Each one is educational, either scientific or cultural, sometimes both,” said Hillary Olson, the museum’s vice president of community engagement.
Every two weeks the theme of the kitchen changes. The first (through March 16) is Colorful Eating, focused on fruits and vegetables. The other themes are food preservation, breads and grains, chocolate, coffee and tea, Wisconsin spring fruits and vegetables, fermentation and dairy. Sampling hours are 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekends, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends.
To explore the full exhibit, visitors should allow about 45 minutes to an hour. There is no particular order in which to take it in. And it’s for all ages.
“Like food itself, Global Kitchen really has something for everyone,” Olson said. “Families really enjoy creating a virtual meal, strolling through the ancient market, and seeing what celebrities like Michael Phelps eat.
“There are also opportunities for older audiences to go deeper into issues like how food insecurity can define a community or how much food waste we produce each year.”
The “virtual meal” is a large table with a digital touch screen enabling guests to move images of vegetables, fruits and grains onto their “plate.”
Numerous special activities are planned around the exhibit, including some off site. Special dinners are being held at local restaurants (see listing on 4E). Free “pop-up museums” will bring some objects to the com-
munity (example: Farm Fresh at the Urban Ecology Center from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 11).
The Milwaukee Food Council is holding events around town on topics like urban gardening, raising chickens, bee keeping and composting. A career day for high school students at the museum will highlight opportunities in the food and beverage manufacturing industry.
There’s even a family overnight event at the museum April 21 (bring your sleeping bag!) with special activities and a breakfast the next morning, Earth Day.
For adults, there’s an evening event March 31 called Indulgences, focused on fun foods we crave — caffeine, chocolate, alcohol, carbs, etc. (And yes, there will be a cash bar.)
According to Olson, “the programming for this exhibit is so incredibly robust, the most we’ve ever done by far for a traveling exhibit.” (For details, visit the museum website at mpm.edu; click on “Calendar of Events.”)
For all the fun and good eating, there’s a serious undertone to the exhibit as well. A video about the exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History website references issues like climate change, a growing population and an unequal distribution of the food supply. Worldwide, the video notes, one in eight people goes hungry.
“I think it’s always good to give pause and to be more mindful about how we nourish ourselves, where the food comes from, what it means,” said Martha Davis Kipcak, local food entrepreneur and community curator for the Global Kitchen exhibit. “We carry so much meaning I think in our cultural identity around food.
“This exhibit gives us an opportunity to expose ourselves to this wide and very complicated topic. Everybody who goes through might have a little different epiphany.”
Olson took the name of the exhibit to heart.
“People love to look into the history and diversity of cooking around the world,” she said. Guests will be “surprised to learn about the sheer complexity of our food system, and how different cultures cook, eat and celebrate with food.
“Though there is a huge amount of diversity... I think people will come away with an understanding of food as a global unifier — something we all enjoy, look forward to and need.”