This is the project description that I sent to members of the Academy community, attached to an email inviting them to schedule an interview time with me:

3 October, 2009
Member of the Academy Community:

My name is Linda Duke and I am an Affiliate Fellow in residence at the Academy for four weeks, Sept. 28-Oct. 26, 2009. Back home, I serve as Director of Education at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. While in residence in Rome, I hope to collect from members of the Academy community descriptions of and reflections on their recent aesthetic experiences – with works of art, architecture and other design arts, gardens and thoughtfully-prepared food.

View from AAR balcony

Volunteers will be invited to speak or write about whichever experiences they choose and may participate as many times as they wish. There are precedents for using language as a window into the types of thinking that are engaged (see below). In this project, it will be important to capture participants’ actual words, via audio recording or in written form. My interest is in examining what commonalities of critical and aesthetic thought might be found across the domains of art, design and culinary art.

If such commonalities can be documented, the implications for educators in any of the three areas would be significant. They would indicate that experiences with the tastes, textures, aromas and appearances of food – experiences that are commonly enjoyed – could be used as an entry point for expanding young people’s capacities for noticing, describing and other activities and mental habits that are fundamental to appreciating art and design. Noticing, wondering, savoring – these mental activities slow us down and put our full attention in the present moment, connect our senses and emotions, and often prompt us to make links to related knowledge from past experiences. Engagement with the arts both fosters and requires these activities. So does the enjoyment of real food, the kind of food that nourishes body and spirit with its sensual beauty. Rich or poor, urban or rural, people, including school children, enjoy food. I hope the data I collect might provide an argument for educators to more often exploit the use of language – in discussion and writing  – related to direct, personal experiences with art, design and food to enhance aesthetic development and awareness. I anticipate writing one or more articles describing what I learn in this project.

AAR Pranza

A well-known model for using discussion and writing to support aesthetic growth and development related to viewing works of art is Visual Thinking Strategies, or VTS, a discussion-based approach to teaching in museum galleries, a professional development program for classroom teachers, and an image curriculum based on the research of psychologist Abigail Housen. VTS is the basis of the IMA’s highly regarded Viewfinders program in several Central Indiana school districts. In her basic research, Housen has demonstrated that language can be used as a kind of window into thinking and, therefore, into the changes in thinking that occur with aesthetic growth. Housen and others have shown that VTS supports aesthetic development in controlled studies. She has also demonstrated that aesthetic thought can be shown to overlap with what is more generally called critical and creative thought. This makes the implications of a program such as VTS, as well as the promotion of aesthetic development itself, important for educators very broadly, beyond the disciplines of art or art history. If aesthetic development is very similar – if not identical – to the development of critical and agile thinking in any field or arena, then the term “aesthetic” is due for a make-over. Instead of referring to something effete and impractical, it may be understood to be an essential aspect of human consciousness and creativity.

For my Academy project, I imagine applying some of the same techniques for gathering language that Housen has developed, expanding them to elicit language describing experiences in the three arenas. With nearly 20 years of professional experience in facilitating discussions about art, I look forward to exploring the potential for fostering discussions of the three arenas (art, design, food) with the Academy residents. I hope that the raw data I collect – the recorded interviews and discussions – might be of interest to others who have the scientific training to analyze them through the lenses of linguistic anthropology and developmental psychology. I am currently seeking collaborators who might play this role. Developmental psychologist Karin DeSantis has agreed to review the material. I hope to engage the assistance of a linguistic anthropologist as well. I imagine these specialists might look at language from several points of view. When and why do people pull terms from other domains? For example, when is it helpful or even necessary to describe a painting’s colors as luscious, a building’s roofline as inspiring, or a pastry crust as heartbreakingly flaky? Do these kinds of appropriations occur more often when people have more or different kinds of experience with art, design or food?

Chefs in AAR

A few words about the usefulness of initiating this project at the American Academy are in order. A quick scan of the impressive list of scholars and artists who are in residence shows that this is a gathering of gifted and uniquely experienced people. So this project is not about collecting samples that would be considered “average” in any way. However, it is an opportunity to learn how much variation there might be between the kind of noticing, reflecting, and wondering an individual directs to an experience with a painting and a building, or a garden, or a seasonal dish. The Academy may afford the opportunity to gather data from individuals who have highly developed critical thinking skills in at least one arena, and to examine whether and how those show up in a non-specialty arena.

The fact that internationally renowned chef and food educator Alice Waters has recently helped the Academy overhaul its dining program is a plus (In Rome, the Academy Learns to Cook, by Elisabeth Rosenthal, NY Times, 3/15/09). That fact ensures that some of the residents will have noticed the quality of the produce and other foodstuffs brought in for meals, as well as the nuances of preparation and flavor juxtapositions. Back at the IMA, educators have been considering opportunities to partner with that organization’s new food provider, Nourish Café.  They’d like to experiment with educational programs that might link thoughtful sensory experiences with food to thoughtful experiences with works of visual art. For me, the opportunity to learn first hand about how a fellow arts organization, the American Academy in Rome, is pursuing this idea will be very useful and timely.

Thank you for your consideration.

Linda Duke
Director of Education, Indianapolis Museum of Art

A few days after sending this, I decided that some interviewees would feel more comfortable if I asked them to choose a picture to discuss. I paid a visit to the wonderful photo archive and was able to get digital images of Academy gardens, the historic Villa, works of art made by artist Fellows, and the nearby Tempietto of Bramante.

Bass and Kitchen Gardens at the Academy

I grateful to say that I have been able to record some wonderfully thoughtful interviews. One of the first was with Alexandra Vinciguerra, the master gardener who has restored all of the Academy’s gardens – the Bass Garden and kitchen gardens at the main building as well as the historic gardens of the Villa Aurelia just down the street. I’ve interviewed the master chefs and interns in the kitchen as they chopped and stirred. I’ve captured the thoughts of scholars about their work here. They talk about the buildings, paintings, music and ruins that have captivated them and sometimes drawn them into relationships lasting decades. The artists and musicians have also given me some astonishing and thought-provoking interviews – fueling my growing sense that our culture needs to better understand that range of aesthetic thinking and the role of the senses in understanding our world and lives. I started with a simple idea: collect samples of language people use to describe aesthetic experiences and see what similarities are found across domains of experience from the arts to design to food. I now feel I have material that begs to be looked from other angles as well.

And you can see how, I mean, it’s painted, this bravura, I mean this coil and the light and then the incredible translucency of the peeled fruit. It’s hard to imagine now how it must have looked... Well, we are always going to be looking at and celebrating that the stuff of the world, you know.

Still Life with a Chinese Porcelain Jar by Willem Kalf

Recently, this work  has caught my attention again, as I’ve had the opportunity to spend a bit of time in the galleries here at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I love the process of “getting to know” a work of art; the way it becomes like a familiar friend, and yet somehow, each time completely delightful and new.  It has me thinking about what catches my attention in each one, and some similarities between the very disparate works that I love. The first thing to come to mind? FOOD.

Some of my favorite works of art, both in this museum and elsewhere, feature fruit prominently. I suppose this could be attributed to “celebrating the stuff of the world,” as Mark Doty said. Undeniably, there is a universal connection between the human experience and the pleasure of eating good food. Artists have used food extensively as symbols in their work throughout the history of painting. For me, it has to do with the beauty of so many things we eat. I am amazed by the endless interpretation of something as simplistic as a bowl of apples.

Here are a few of my favorite food-related works of art from around the country.

I saw this painting in a Gauguin exhibition at the Met. It’s one of my favorites of Gauguin’s, both in style and subject, and I came to appreciate it more after I learned about his body of work and influence on the painters of his time in Gauguin and the Generation of the 1890s.

Two Tahitian Women with Mangoes by Paul Gauguin

I originally was introduced to the work of Ellsworth Kelly by way of his color field paintings. But the images I can’t get out of my head are his simple line drawings of fruit.

Apples by Ellsworth Kelly

And finally, for something completely different, there is something so jubilant and inviting about the cherry perched atop the spoon in this famous sculpture from Minneapolis.

Spoonbridge and Cherry, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

Needless to say, I also loved listening to Alice Waters of Chez Panisse speak about food and nutrition when she was here last year.

What works of art with food do you love?

She covered all the points you’d expect from a sustainable food advocate: the health crimes of fast food, the shame that many urban children have no idea where their food comes from, the lack of time for experiencing food.

But then she turned to the power of tablecloths. In her work with schools gardens (a.k.a. Edible Schoolyards, the subject of her new book), she noted that children flock to a table with a tablecloth. The kids recognize a well-set table as a sign of love and care.

She also addressed olive oil, equating good oil with life quality. This is a woman who carries her own olive oil with her when she travels. Lest her connoisseurship smack of elitism, Alice assured the crowd that quality-intense food pleasures like these are available at any farmers market across the land.

But just when you think she’s a charming spokesperson for edible beauty…she roars. She told the crowd of her daughter’s admission to Yale University, and their introduction to the college president Richard Levin. Alice twisted his arm, and showed him the light, encouraging him to leverage Yale’s food buying power to develop a local food program at Yale. Seven years later, the Yale Sustainable Food Project is going strong, complete with campus garden and a café with a sustainable menu.

True to her crusading ways, Alice didn’t leave Indy until she had dinner with IMA CEO Maxwell Anderson and several museum donors, which she took as an opportunity to inquire about the IMA’s food service, noting her disappointment with art museums that are monuments to beauty and human creativity, only to disappoint with sad cafes full of pre-packaged, soulless food. Watch the IMA Café in the coming year to see if her comments stuck…

In and among the logistics of her visit, a few of us on the public programs staff had a quiet moment with Alice. We told her we liked working with her assistant Varun, to arrange her visit (a long-term, intense process). “Varun walked into my office, with his long, long eyelashes, and I said, ‘you’re hired.’”

There it is again: Alice’s capacity for intoxication with life—the most persuasive argument you’ll ever hear for art, or food.

Did you hear Alice Waters at IMA last Tuesday? What did you think?

Interview with Alice Waters
As published in the winter issue of the IMA’s Previews membership magazine

Q. What culture do you think has the most interesting relationship with food?
While I can only speak to the cultures I’ve visited, I find the Mediterranean culture of Southern Italy has a unique balance in their relationship with food. Food is part of the fabric of life there. It’s not on the side in the form of health or fueling up. It’s connected to meaningful everyday experiences. Sitting down at the table with family and friends is precious and important.

Q. What did you learn from your grandparents about food?
Not much. My grandparents were Irish English and it seemed to me that they liked to eat quite a lot, but that’s it. They had a narrow, limited diet. My parents were concerned about diet but didn’t know how to cook. My interest in food came from working in my parents’ Victory garden, and my passion came from traveling to France at the age of 19. The experience opened up a world to me.

Q. How are children in the Edible Schoolyard project transformed by food?
When kids are growing the food and cooking it themselves they build a sense of pride in what they are doing. When they serve it, they want to eat it, and their friends want to eat it. The ideas about food happen by osmosis. The values we talk about are absorbed by the kids in the process of working in the garden and kitchen. Science and history classes educate their senses and open their eyes to the world around them, not just to food.

Q. What’s the relationship between food and art?
You can set a table with flowers and cloth and it’s like magic. I think of art as magic. It nourishes us in beautiful ways that we can’t speak about. I see beauty as a way of caring. Both food and art offer the possibility of seeing the world in a different way.

The reason I’m interested in working with artists is to take food out of that ‘foody’ place and put it into the beauty of culture. Food is a universal language. We are digesting fast, cheap and easy. The consequences of the choices we make are destroying our world and our culture. I envision a place where an artist is curating the food. You would walk through a beautiful museum and food would be part of that experience.

Q. What artists inspire you?
Peter Sellars, Olafur Eliasson and Ann Hamilton – These artists have a way of surprising people and caring about the same set of values that I’m talking about.

Q. What’s in your refrigerator?
All the produce I brought back from a friend’s garden, jams given to me, milk, coffee, a bottle of Bandol Rose Wine, two small bottles of sweet wine from my daughter’s birthday, duck eggs, pickles, mustard, walnuts and hazelnuts, a couple lemons and Seltzer water.

Q. If you could be any food, what would you be and why?
It’s a toss up between being sweet like tomatoes or spicy like garlic.

Recipes from Alice Waters
If you are still unsure of what will dress the Thanksgiving dinner table tomorrow, try these recipes from the kitchen of Alice Waters.

The goats had stepped aside and the rain blustered outside. Eighty diners piled into the hay-filled dining hall for a five-course extravaganza presented by Slow Food Indy. Slow Food in an international movement working to reconnect people with the pleasures of real food, sustainably produced. Money raised from the dinner was used to send several local chefs and cooking students to Terra Madre, the global gastronomic gathering in Turin, Italy.

Participating chefs stood on hay bales to present their courses. Regina Mehallick of R Bistro bestowed the heirloom tomato soup. Former Elements chef Greg Hardesty presented his Tortilla Espagnole—a quiche-like dish made from the sweet eggs of alfalfa-fed chickens and topped with Indiana sweet corn salsa. Goose the Market owner Chris Eley served lamb-stuffed-with-ground-lamb raised on the farm where we ate, along with a sweet potato mash flavored with chestnut honey, parsley, and crunchy duck cracklings—amazing.

For dessert? A rustic cake of apples, ginger and crystallized ginger with crème anglaise and pecans, prepared by Amanda Taylor of Ivy Tech Community College culinary arts program. Just when I thought the blissfest was over, here came a plate of butter cookie twists embellished with pine nuts, made by a local church lady.

It was an auspicious meal, cooked and eaten with full consciousness of the aesthetics, politics, and poetry of food.

If you’re into food at this level, don’t miss nationally-known chef and food educator Alice Waters’ visit to the IMA’s Tobias Theater Tuesday, December 2. Waters is the founder of the Chez Panisse restaurant and foundation in Berkeley, CA. She also created the Edible Schoolyard project to integrate food (and gardening) into every aspect of school curriculum. Alice is also the subject of a juicy new biography (juicy in more ways than one). Alice Waters tickets go on sale today. Watch the IMA blog for Noelle Pulliam’s interview with Alice.

If you knew your next meal were your last, what would you have? Bon appétit.