Edible art? Artists use unusual mediums these days, including chocolate. Artist Jean Wertz Zaun specializes in creating chocolate sculptures and paintings that are to be kept and cherished as works of art in their own right. In fact, last August, Zaun was commissioned by the Henry Ford Museum to create a chocolate painting to enhance their showing of Chocolate: The Exhibition. And among others, the Toledo Museum of Art commissioned 37 of Zaun’s works in chocolate to enhance their Van Gogh Fields exhibit in 2003. View a gallery of her museum commissions here.

Other artist have succeeded in this sweet medium including Sid Chidiac who creates edible art, fashion and body painting. Another is Chef Gary Petzl who uses chocolate as both a medium and a working material for sculptures, often creating entire exhibitions. Zaun suggests visiting the Chocolarte Web site to learn more about artists working in chocolate globally.

According to Chocolarte, the concept behind the art is to re-examine our perception of chocolate solely as food and to examine other everyday assumptions. “In using chocolate as an art medium, the viewers are asked to cross the bridge of assumption, of meaning and definition. If this bridge can be crossed then by extension the viewers can rethink the meaning and value of any and all signs in art, in language, in perceptions and in the conclusions they draw. We take chocolate to be a pure and simple pleasure, the dream of a child. We never question this.”

One affordable item that Zaun makes are miniature chocolate paintings delivered in their own gift box. They are white and dark chocolate, food coloring and edible gold, and come in numerous homages like Andy Warhol, Van Gogh, Kahlo and Munch. They sell for $25 each. As for the neighborhood trick-or-treaters…they get her duds!

Photo credit: Munch’s Scream ©2006-08 Jean Zaun

At the ISM, Footprints features taxidermy to die for. In an exploration of the natural history of what is today Indiana, stuffed ice age sabertooths cavort with stuffed otters, owls, fish and badgers, arranged in an unintentionally surreal tableau. This is installation art if I’ve ever seen it: a barrage of lives that were, juxtaposed for maximum emotional impact. Later in the show, there are piercing black-and-white photos of Indiana’s hunting history. The eyes of the hunters and their giddy hounds smolder with pride in front a wall of raccoon skins, circa 1935. Footprints has a high haunt factor.

The Harley-Davidson Museum, on the other hand, is pure exaltation. This cathedral to industrial design and American capitalism opened just this month after a multi-year planning process. Founded in 1903 by two pals (Bill Harley and Arthur Davidson) pimping bikes in a shed, Harley-Davidson is now global. Designed by Pentagram —the same firm the IMA is working with now on branding and wayfinding—the museum building is gutsy urban chic on a 20-acre plot in downtown Milwaukee, and a new biker mecca, no doubt.

Inside, there’s a motorcycle preservation lab, a stylistic gallery of engines and gas tanks, a social history of Harleys, and a slanted video screen with Evel Knievel footage. (The café’s corn-and-barley salad with tarragon pesto dressing was also super yum). Though the whole place could easily fall into the corporate propaganda category, I came away with an appreciation for the artistry of automotive engineering, an expanded concept of rugged American coolness, and a crush on the sexed-up architecture.

Both exhibitions raise questions about agendas in museums. Museums are by nature mediated experiences. How do artifact selection, building design and didactic language work on you? An object—an embarrassed-looking stuffed fox or a vintage Harley Electra Glide Sport—can leave you reeling.

We like to noodle on these issues at the IMA. The question of mediation or interpretation is especially interesting in the case of IMA’s Art & Nature Park slated to open in 2009. You can’t hang a label on a cloud. So we’re looking for ways to create dialogue between art and nature in visitors’ minds in surprising ways.

If you’ve had any memorable museum pilgrimages this summer, or meditations on museum objects with impact, do tell.