Closing Soon: ‘The Art of Dining, Food Culture in the Islamic World’ at the Detroit Institute of Arts

It’s unsurprising that food, such a central part of the animal—and thus, human—experience, has been a recurring theme in art, whether in the tantalizingly rendered fruits in Pompeian murals and medieval morality tales disguised in paintings as feasting scenes or, more recently, in works like Salvador Dalí’s Retrospective Bust of a Woman or Kathleen Ryan’s beautifully grotesque sculptures of mold-covered fruit. As a topic, food in art has been much explored—Kenneth Bendiner’s Food in Painting: From the Renaissance to the Present offers a particularly illuminating look at how the culture around food has influenced art (and vice versa). For a bite-size history of food in art, there’s a Google Arts & Culture explainer with plenty of delicious imagery.

As for exhibitions tackling food as an artistic theme, there’s always something simmering. A quick search returns results for “Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism” at Frist Art Museum (opens January 31, 2025), “The Art of Food” at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (through March 8, 2025) and the Detroit Institute of Arts’ “The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World,” which wraps up just after the New Year.

Originally served up by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as “Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art Of Feasting,” the Detroit edition comes with an updated menu: nearly 230 objects—from paintings and decorative dishware to cookbooks—borrowed from 30 collections spanning the U.S., Europe and the Middle East plus sixteen works from the DIA’s collection, among them a rooster-headed ceramic ewer from 13th-century Iran and a gorgeously etched tinned copper salt cellar from 17th-century India.

Ostensibly a show of Islamic art, what stands out in “The Art of Dining” is the broad lens through which breaking bread is examined, even given the geographical limitations, and the experiential components of the show. There are paintings and decorative objects from the Middle East and Egypt; Central, South and East Asia; and Europe, as well as clothing and musical instruments, but an interactive installation featuring a sufra invites visitors to sit for a digitally generated six-course meal of foods from around the Islamic world. A contemporary multimedia installation by Iraqi-born artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, A Thread of Light Between My Mother’s Fingers and Heaven (2023), draws on memories of his mother’s homemade bread and family meals in Baghdad to evoke feelings of comfort, love and nostalgia.

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Much of what might strike some as unfamiliar at first will actually be familiar—a sufra is simply a cloth, tray or table on which food is served. “We can all relate to the practices of eating, drinking and sharing a meal with friends and family, and this exhibition invites visitors to reflect upon the personal and cultural connections we make through food,” DIA associate curator Katherine Kasdorf said in a statement.

But “The Art of Dining” dives even deeper into the impressions and connections we begin to form the moment we first consume something other than our mothers’ milk. There’s an olfactory component to the exhibition—scent boxes filled with the aromas of rosewater, orange blossom, coffee and cardamom—and much of what we perceive as taste actually comes from the nose. Scents (and thus tastes) have transportative powers, calling us back to specific moments in time or, as here, inviting us to more firmly ground ourselves in the appurtenances of other people and places.

“The show invites us to connect with our shared humanity,” writes DIA director Salvador Salort-Pons. “We are privileged to eat every day, benefiting from the wonderful fruits of nature, as we come together at the dining table.” We all, he says, belong to cultures of dining—eating, as an experience in and of itself, “transcends all backgrounds, borders, and nationalities.” One could say the same of art.

“The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World” at the Detroit Institute of Arts closes on January 5.