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Explore artwork from the exhibition Savor and travel back to the 1700s to learn how food inventions from the past have changed the ways we eat today. Then create an artwork that looks good enough to eat. Digital activity packs include art-making demonstrations, visual scavenger hunts, close looking prompts, and story time in English and Spanish. Available on the second Saturday of the month and afterwards.
ART MAKING ACTIVITY
Inspired by the spring vegetables in Savor, Youth and Community Programs Manager Marisely Gonzalez uses model magic to re-create garden greens. Try your hand at creating a food sculpture that deceives the eye.
EXHIBITION CONNECTIONS
Watch food historian Ivan Day make ice cream using 300-year-old recipes and techniques.
A melon made of dyed green sausage and oysters? Click here and listen to curator Meredith Chilton discuss how tin and copper molds were used to create whimsical dishes.
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A CLOSER LOOK
Artist: Wayne Thiebaud, American, born 1920
Title: Half Cakes
Date: 1961
Media: Oil on canvas
Thiebaud’s mouth watering still lifes demonstrate his ability to use paint in unexpected ways. In Half Cakes, he painted each dessert with thick, heavy strokes to produce a textured surface. The artist transformed the oil paint into a dense buttery frosting.
- Zoom in on the work. Notice how the white icing consists of reds, blues and oranges. What other colors do you notice?
- What shapes are repeated?
- Try sketching your own dessert drawing. What foods would you choose?
- Do you enjoy these foods during a special occasion?
- What tastes, sounds and smells are associated with these dishes?
STORY TIME
Carlos refuses to listen to his mother’s call to bath after spending time on the family farm, that is until a squash starts to grow in his ear! Listen to Docent Augusta Gonzalez read Jan Romero Stevens’ bilingual children’s book Carlos and the Squash Plant / Carlos y la planta de calabaza. Afterwards join Augusta in the kitchen as she prepares Calabacitas a traditional Mexican squash dish.
Find out what happens when a caterpillar with a voracious appetite eats his way through a variety of food. Sit back and listen to Youth and Community Programs Manager Marisely Gonzalez read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
Enjoy Baroque music performed by violinist Sandro Ladu and pianist Ina Jun.