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4/10/2001

Eat Art

Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge

Drawn in Part from Busch-Reisinger’s Collection, Exhibition Explores Food as Artistic Material in German Art since the Mid-1960s

Exhibition Developed through Harvard’s Renowned Curatorial Internship Program

Eat Art: Joseph Beuys, Dieter Roth, Sonja Alhäuser, a major exhibition featuring food as artistic material in German art created from the mid-1960s to the present day, will open at Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum on October 5, 2001. The exhibition will remain on view through December 15 and will encompass more than 50 sculptures, prints, and drawings primarily from the Busch-Reisinger’s collection, including several recent acquisitions of works by Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) and Dieter Roth (1930-1998) that have never before been on public display. Eat Art will also feature a site-specific installation commissioned by the Busch-Reisinger and created by Sonja Alhäuser (b. 1969), whose work will be presented in the United States for the first time. The use of nontraditional, especially edible and organic materials, is a major theme in 20th-century art, and the works presented in Eat Art will incorporate a wide range of unorthodox artistic materials, including chocolate, margarine, salami, teabags, honey, and mayonnaise.
Developed through Harvard’s curatorial internship program, Eat Art underscores the seminal and ongoing role the Harvard University Art Museums, as a leading teaching and research institution, plays in the training of future professionals and scholars within the museum community.

Eat Art was organized by Tanja Maka, Michalke Curatorial Intern at the Busch-Reisinger Museum, under the direction of Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. The curatorial internship program at the Art Museums provides hands-on experience for students preparing for professional and scholarly careers in art history, particularly at museums. Interns participate in the full range of curatorial activities including developing programming, building the Art Museums’ collections, documenting the permanent collection, and publishing scholarly findings. Distinguished by the range and depth of its collections, the resources of the Straus Center for Conservation, and the Harvard University community, the Harvard University Art Museums provides unparalleled resources to train new generations of scholars and professionals.

"Eat Art is the result of a collaboration between an evolving scholar and a seasoned expert and their subsequent exchange of knowledge and ideas," said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director. "The Art Museums’ curatorial training program plays an important role in shaping the minds and fostering the talents of future curators and leaders within the museum community, and it is an essential element of the Art Museums' role as the leading training ground for museum professionals in the world."

Eat Art offers an opportunity to explore the work of three artists linked by the use of nontraditional artistic material rather than by theme or ideology. The exhibition will examine a wide range of issues from permanence and immediate gratification to preservation and consumption. Joseph Beuys wanted to reconnect art to everyday life. He believed that society should be based on creative or spiritual rather than economic capital, and the dense system of symbolic meanings he attached to organic materials helped to convey this political vision. Visitors will have a special opportunity to view a large group of Beuys’ Economic Values, 1977-82, packaged goods inscribed by the artist that are rarely on view because of their sensitive nature. Dieter Roth employed edible materials as a means of displaying the effects of time, allowing natural change to occur without interference by the artist. Furthermore, he used food as a means of parodying the serious tone and preservationist impulse he perceived in the art world. Among Roth’s works will be a self-portrait entitled Chocolate Lion, 1971. The exhibition will also feature an installation by Sonja Alhäuser, an artist living in Düsseldorf, Germany. Alhäuser has created Exhibition Basics, 2001, several large sculptures constructed of chocolate, popcorn, caramel, and marzipan, and related drawings. In a celebration of hedonistic enjoyment, she demands that visitors eat her work and thus, over time, slowly destroy it. In this way Alhäuser problematizes accepted notions of museumgoers’ behavior and challenges the mission of the museum to preserve the art work.

"This exhibition of artists, linked by their creation of organic or edible art objects, provides an exploration of the multiple meanings or directions possible from like materials," said Tanja Maka, Michalke Curatorial Intern, Busch-Reisinger Museum. "Food is a major part of the landscape of our everyday lives, and when it is used by an artist to communicate a message, it is transformed into a meaningful medium that departs from its everyday associations."

The Busch-Reisinger Museum has recently acquired significant works by both Joseph Beuys and Dieter Roth that will be showcased in the exhibition. They include 40 works from the Willy and Charlotte Reber Collection of multiples and unique works by Joseph Beuys, acquired by the Busch-Reisinger beginning in 1995. Two multiples by Roth, Chocolate Lion, 1971 (chocolate), and Shit Hare, 1975 (dirt, straw, hay, rabbit droppings), were acquired this year in anticipation of Eat Art.

"As the only museum of its kind in the western hemisphere, the Busch-Reisinger offers a significant collection of twentieth-century masters and post-1945 German art that provides an exceptional context for this exhibition of modern German art," said Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. "The exhibition is further enriched by the presentation of new work by emerging artist Sonja Alhäuser, whom we are very proud to be introducing to our visitors, along with recent acquisitions of works by Joseph Beuys and Dieter Roth. A curatorial intern such as Tanja can bring a fresh and innovative perspective to exploring new works and building upon these collections. This exhibition raises challenging questions about the purposes and procedures of museums while allowing the work of the three artists to unfold in a rich dialogue."

The Curatorial Internship Program The curatorial internship program was founded and designed to broaden the experience of persons embarking on professional and scholarly careers in art history who are considering the museum profession. As a teaching and research institution, the Harvard University Art Museums is deeply committed to the education of future museum professionals and scholars through internships drawing upon a range of the Art Museums’ resources. Ten-month academic year internships are offered by the Drawing Department, the Print Department, and the Islamic and Later Indian Art Department. The Busch-Reisinger Museum offers a 22-month internship annually, and the position is designated in alternate years for European nationals. The Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies offers three conservation internships per academic year.

Recent projects within the internship program include the development of a Web site devoted to John Singer Sargent based on the Fogg Art Museum’s collection of the artist’s work; exhibitions focusing on themes of nature and industry in contemporary art; 17thcentury Dutch landscape prints; the album in Islamic art of the 16th through 19th centuries; and the development of programs and strategies for increased public use of the the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s study room, among many others.

The Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums is one of the leading arts institutions in the United States and the world. It is distinguished by the range and depth of its collections, its groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of its staff. For more than a century, it has been the nation’s premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and is renowned for its seminal and ongoing role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.

The three Art Museums at Harvard-the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Fogg Art Museum-are all outstanding institutions in their respective fields. The Fogg also houses the Straus Center for Conservation, long a leader in the research and development of scientific and technology-based analysis of art, as well as the U. S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an ongoing excavation project in western Turkey. The 150,000 objects in the Art Museums’ collections range in date from ancient times to the present and come from Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Each Museum also has an active program of special exhibitions that promotes new scholarship in its areas of focus.

As an integral component of the Harvard University community, the three Art Museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is welcome to experience the collections and special exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs in the various museums.

The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m.5 p.m., and Sunday, 1-5 p.m., and are closed on national holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18, and for all individuals on Saturdays until noon and all day on Wednesdays.

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