food museum blog

War, Sports, Trump Food History, Again--Smithsonian

  As you may have read recently, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History will close for two ( we're betting 4-6 )  years for an overhaul. During that time the sports section will be especially enhanced and the spectacularly refurbished Star Spangled banner will be displayed in a new, dramatic setting.  ( In November 2004, the museum opened a $22 million permanent exhibition called "The Price of Freedom: Americans At War." )

The Bread and Circuses arena will also be re-habbed, evidently. No, wait!  Sorry...Foodie is feeling a tad ornery today.

The plans for the renovations at the museum apparently do not include any efforts to revisit the story of food.  Since nothing happens in any field of endeavor until the people involved have been fed ( see Napoleon Bonaparte: "An army marches on its stomach,") we continue to find this oversight curious.

The FOOD Museum is promoting the concept of a National Museum of Farm and Food  on the Mall. Many have written us in support of this idea.  Maybe as more Americans tire of a certain war now on-going, we can collectively embrace the notion of a lively, tasty exhibition celebrating what nurtures us all.

The Smithsonian's Food & Farm Museum

What about adding a National Museum of Food & Agriculture as part of the USA's Smithsonian network?

We kept hearing that the newest Smithsonian component...the National Museum of the American Indian which opened last week to great fanfare was filling the last space on Washington's National Mall, home to a half dozen or more museums in the Smithsonian family.

Yes, that was the last open space, but what about taking the only non-museum building on the mall which happens to be just one of several Department of Agriculture offices (see maps above) and convert that to a museum dedicated to American food and farming? We have always thought that the Dept of Agriculture building is out of place along side the Freer Art Gallery, across from the National Museum of American History and nearby to the National Museum of Natural History, and Smithsonian museums devoted to African and Asian art.

There are some exhibits about farming in the American History museum, and here and there at the Natural History museum a visitor can see something about the foods of the Americas. But how Americans have farmed and fed themselves and much of the rest of the world is mostly neglected by the nation's official museum system.

So, you may be seeing this proposal here for the first time. The Department of Agriculture has lots of other office buildings nearby and many more in other parts of the DC metro area, so displacing some employees shouldn't be a huge problem.

What do you think about this? Should we try and mount a campaign to get this idea discussed?