Farm to Table: Food and Identity in the Age of Impressionism

Public tours are always FREE and meet in the front lobby. 

Farm to Table: Food and Identity in the Age of Impressionism explores the intersections of art, gastronomy, and national identity in fin-de-siècle France. The exhibition showcases over sixty paintings and sculptures, including the work of Claude Monet, Eva Gonzalès, Victor Gilbert, Paul Gauguin, Jules Dalou, and Vincent van Gogh, artists who examined the nation’s unique relationship with food. The bounty of France’s agriculture and the skill of its chefs had long helped to define its strength and position on the international stage. This self-image as the world’s culinary capital became more important in the late nineteenth century as the country grappled with war, political instability, imperialism, and industrialization. In this climate, France’s culinary traditions signaled notions of its refinement, fortitude, and ingenuity while they also exposed fractures that destabilized national identity. From cultivation to consumption, food was central to notions of glory but also to those of collective pain. Farm to Table puts this history on view through the eyes and hands of the period’s greatest artists, who avidly brought subjects from agricultural fields to Parisian dining rooms into their painting and sculpture, documenting and reinforcing monumental cultural shifts at the heart of European modernity.

Image: Victor Gabriel Gilbert (French, 1847–1933), The Square in Front of Les Halles, 1880, oil on panel, 21 1/8 x 29 in., Musée d’art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre, 163

Homeschool and school groups as well as groups of 10 or more people are not permitted on public tours. Please reach out to the Tour Coordinator and submit a tour request form to ensure the best possible tour for your group.

If you need accessibility accommodations, please contact us in advance at [email protected] or fill out the accessibility request form.