Gourmet Ghettos: Modern Food Rituals (Fall 2014)

Curators Francesco Spagnolo and Shir Kochavi present insights and connections emerging from the holdings of UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection, one of the largest Jewish museum collections in the world. Zooming In: Gourmet Ghettos: Modern Food Rituals reflects on the Fall, 2014 exhibition Gourmet Ghettos, and highlights how it will be revisited, along with other Magnes exhibitions from the last decade in the context of Time Capsules, a new exhibition opening to the public in the Fall.

Curated in collaboration with India Mandelkern, then a graduate student in History, Gourmet Ghettosexplored the broader linkages between food, ritual, identity, and activism that inform Jewish life by highlighting over 150 objects from around the world, including cookware, tableware, kitchen textiles, books, manuscripts, paintings, and drawings. The exhibition examined Jewish food rituals as meaningful frameworks with which to contextualize today’s food movement, investigating a phenomenon that is deeply embedded in Berkeley’s history, a city with its own “gourmet ghetto” and powerful tradition of social justice.