Snacktime!: Serving Up Treats from MAD’s Collection

Who’s hungry? In this delectable module, you’ll find creations inspired by tasty treats as well as some of the more whimsical serving accoutrements in MAD’s collection. MAD has a history of showcasing the art of food, dating back to the museum’s Cookies and Breads: The Baker's Art exhibition in 1966 and the Haus-Rucker-Co LIVE! exhibition in 1970, during which the Viennese architectural collective hosted weekly meals for the public in the museum’s galleries. But unlike those more ephemeral celebrations of food, this module features works from the collection that memorialize snacks and the art of consuming them using more traditional craft media and techniques. Marvin Lipofsky’s glass sculptures from “The Great American Food” series were created by taking molds from real-life pickles, hot dogs, and Quarter-Pounders, while Jeanette Katsenberg’s Incredible Edible dress is adorned with the labels for a variety of sweet treats—Bazooka bubble gum, Chiclets, and Lifesavers—meticulously reproduced in beading. Ceramicists Peter VandenBerge and David Gilhooly recreate familiar dishes like beans and Wheaties, though the latter contains the possibly less familiar—and more unwelcome—addition of three frogs in the bowl; another of Gilhooly’s sculptures presents a chipper frog taking a coffee break of his own. And speaking of coffee, the module contains two of the more lively examples of the collection’s holdings of dining and drinking sets: Dorothy Hafner’s Blue Loop with Headdress coffee service displays a bold graphic sensibility, while Lynne Turner’s “Expresso” set presents an almost anthropomorphized set of vessels relating to the ritual. Other colorful sets and servingware highlight the fun of dining. Yet Howard Kottler’s mixed media sculpture Dinner For Me presents an alternative, and more somber, relationship between food and artmaking. Text on the place setting recounts a breakup: “There was more but less time for my art, and art is important in my life. I’m alone, but not lonely. Once again, it’s dinner for me.”