With sponsorship from hospitality provider BaxterStorey, the V&A has brought together artists and designers with chefs, farmers, scientists and local communities, to explore how “we make can a more sustainable, just and delicious food future in unexpected and playful ways.”
Divided into four sections - compost, farming, trading and eating – the exhibition will focus on the whole journey from compost to table, and offer new and alternative ideas for the future of food.
This will range from social farming projects to the role of technology in growing and farming plants and animals, to home composting schemes seen in India, to gastronomic experiments such as culturing cheese from human bacteria and ‘The Sausage of the Future.’
It will also address trading difficulties and look to find “more transparent and diverse ways” of buying, selling and transporting food through old and new methods alike. The ultimate aim of this exhibit will be to make supply chains visible and reconnect consumers and producers.
At a time when food and peoples’ relationship to is is of “increasing global interest and debate,” the eating section will explore the “pleasure of cooking and how a meal connects (people) culturally, socially and politically.”
It will question the role of the dinner table, challenges in feeding the world, and scientific projects, ingredients and recipes that “push the boundaries of ingenuity in cooking.”
‘FOOD: Bigger than the Plate’ co-curators, Catherine Flood and May Rosenthal Sloan, said: “Food is one of the most powerful tools through which we shape the world we live in - from how we create society, culture and pleasure, to how we determine our relationship with the natural world.
“In an era of major ecological challenges, fast-changing societies and technological re-invention, now is a crucial time to ask: what will we be eating tomorrow? What kind of food future do we want? What could it look like? And taste like?
“Today, a wide range of practitioners are addressing these expansive questions.
“Putting food at the heart of the museum, this exhibition is an exciting opportunity to bring together some of the best work exploring food as rich ground for citizenship, subversion and celebration.”
The exhibition will run 18 May – 20 October at the V&A, London. Advanced tickets cost £17, with an early bird offer of 40% of available for a limited time.
https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/food-exhibition-promo-code-terms-and-conditions