ESNA Conference 2017
Food, glorious food: Food at the heart of nineteenth-century art
June 8-9, 2017
Antwerp, MAS
Organized by ESNA (European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art) and MAS (Antwerp), in conjunction with the exhibition ANTWERP À LA CARTE.
This year’s two-day international ESNA conference intends to study the various and complex relations between food, the experience of eating, and nineteenth-century art. Although food has always been a subject in the arts, the modes of production, distribution and consumption of nourishment changed radically during the course of the nineteenth century. Food decisively entered the public sphere and consciousness in cities where new sites of consumption in the form of mouth-watering food shops and restaurants emerged. At the same time food became a marker of national identity, of gender identity, of ‘taste’, of affluence, and of social and economic status.
Modern phenomena such as industrialization, liberalization of the market, urbanization, rise of the middle class, issues of nationality and gender, leisure time and economic upheaval affected the gastronomic field as well as the depiction of it in the visual arts. A new fascination for food emerged and was reflected in the entire panoply of the artistic field, ranging from recipes, food literature, decorative arts and interior design to works of art and art criticism.
Registration
Regular: € 60 (both days) | € 40 (1 day)
Student: € 40 (both days) | € 25 (1 day)
Tickets are available via the RKD webshop
Organizing committee: Leen Beyers (MAS, Antwerp), Allison Deutsch (University College London), Maite van Dijk (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Mayken Jonkman (RKD-Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague), Lisa Smit (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
Scientific committee: Jan Dirk Baetens (Radboud University Nijmegen), Leen Beyers (MAS, Antwerp), Ilja van Damme (University of Antwerp), Allison Deutsch (University College London), Maite van Dijk (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Rachel Esner (University of Amsterdam), Mayken Jonkman (RKD-Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague), Jenny Reynaerts (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Lisa Smit (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University)
The ANTWERP A LA CARTE exhibition at the MAS looks at the intimate relationship between food and the city. The exhibition takes visitors on a tour of old markets and supermarkets, peeking into inns, pubs and restaurants, presenting contemporary takes on sixteenth-century recipes and diving into cesspits to reconstruct people’s menus. Food has shaped the appearance of the city and the urban culture for centuries, and the exhibition highlights this with masterpieces by some of Antwerp’s greatest painters as well as contemporary art installations, photography and rare kitchen utensils. The exhibition shows the impact of food for the past, but also raises questions about the future, questioning how cities will be fed, when by 2050 seven out of ten of the earth’s inhabitants will have left rural lands in order to live in cities.
Visit the museum’s website for more information about ANTWERP A LA CARTE.
European Society for Nineteenth-Century Art 
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