Irina D. Mihalache - Böcker

Museums of all kinds – art, history, culture, science centers and heritage sites – are actively engaging with food through exhibitions, collections, and stories about food production, consumption, history, taste, and aesthetics. Food also plays a central role in their food courts, restaurants, cafes, gardens, and gift shops. Food and Museums is the first book to explore the diverse, complex relationship between museums and food. This edited collection features theoretical analysis from cultural historians, anthropologists, neuroscientists, and food studies scholars; interviews with museum professionals, artists and chefs; and critical case studies from a wide range of cultural institutions and museums to establish an interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of the role of food in museums. Exploring the richness and complexity of sensory, cultural, social, and political significance of food today as well as in the past, the book demonstrates how food is changing the current museological landscape.A fascinating look at contemporary museums through the lens of food, this is an essential read for students and researchers in museum studies, food studies, cultural studies, and sensory studies as well as museum and food professionals.

Cookbooks. Menus. Ingredients. Dishes. Pots. Kitchens. Markets. Museum exhibitions. These objects, representations, and environments are part of what the volume calls the material cultures of food. The book features leading scholars, professionals, and chefs who apply a material cultural perspective to consider two relatively unexplored questions: 1) What is the material culture of food? and 2) How are frameworks, concepts, and methods of material culture used in scholarly research and professional practice?This book acknowledges that materiality is historically and culturally specific (local), but also global, as food both transcends and collapses geographical and ideological borders. Contributors capture the malleability of food, its material environments and “stuff,” and its representations in media, museums, and marketing, while following food through cycles of production, circulation, and consumption. As many of the featured authors explore, food and its many material and immaterial manifestations not only reflect social issues, but also actively produce, preserve, and disrupt identities, communities, economic systems, and everyday social practices.The volume includes contributions from and interviews with a dynamic group of scholars, museum and information professionals, and chefs who represent diverse disciplines, such as communication studies, anthropology, history, American studies, folklore, and food studies.

Cookbooks. Menus. Ingredients. Dishes. Pots. Kitchens. Markets. Museum exhibitions. These objects, representations, and environments are part of what the volume calls the material cultures of food. The book features leading scholars, professionals, and chefs who apply a material cultural perspective to consider two relatively unexplored questions: 1) What is the material culture of food? and 2) How are frameworks, concepts, and methods of material culture used in scholarly research and professional practice?This book acknowledges that materiality is historically and culturally specific (local), but also global, as food both transcends and collapses geographical and ideological borders. Contributors capture the malleability of food, its material environments and “stuff,” and its representations in media, museums, and marketing, while following food through cycles of production, circulation, and consumption. As many of the featured authors explore, food and its many material and immaterial manifestations not only reflect social issues, but also actively produce, preserve, and disrupt identities, communities, economic systems, and everyday social practices.The volume includes contributions from and interviews with a dynamic group of scholars, museum and information professionals, and chefs who represent diverse disciplines, such as communication studies, anthropology, history, American studies, folklore, and food studies.