Modern Meals: Remaking American Foods from Farm to Kitchen

October 12, 2011–January 15, 2012
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum @ 10975 SW 17th Street + The Wolfsonian–FIU @ 1001 Washington Avenue

More than a century ago, Americans began eating foods that, instead of being grown and prepared at home or nearby, were mass-produced and distributed on national and global scales. An installation of Wolfsonian collection objects at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Modern Meals traced the movement of food from the field to the factory, supermarket, and kitchen table, in order to explore how modern technology, design, and business practices created new meanings for food and eating in this era.

The exhibition invited viewers to consider how business imperatives, government policies, and the changing habits of consumers have shaped modern American foodways. Over the first half of the twentieth century, the values of industrial efficiency and scale, at times powerfully reinforced by the demands of wartime mobilization, transformed the landscapes and intimate spaces of food production and consumption. Even amidst these changes, Americans continued to idealize generations-old practices in the fields and at home.

Modern Meals: Remaking American Foods from Farm to Kitchen was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-curated by April Merleaux, FIU Department of History, and Jonathan Mogul, The Wolfsonian–FIU. It was also later presented at The Wolfsonian, May 17–September 29, 2013.