Culinary history of Israel

A full wall-length animation by Ada Rimon and Ofeq Shemer at the entrance launches the exhibit and takes visitors back in time to the extravagant meals of the ancient Near East. Displays of ancient feast vessels of every size from the museum’s collections show just how grand and complex the meals could be, requiring days of preparation and scores of staff to carry off a banquet.

Alongside slaughtering knives, preserved fruit cores and wheat kernels that demonstrate what we know about our ancestors’ recipes is a video about beer made with yeast extracted from 3,000-year-old vessels discovered by archaeologists, cultivated by microbiologists and brewed locally. The beer they produced from the ancient yeast is now on tap — in bottled form — at the museum gift shop.

Want an ancient banquet recipe? Curator Nurith Goshen gathered four ancient dishes’ ingredients and instructions, all accessed on a touch-screen table. There are also behind-the-scenes details of the ancient banquet menus, invitations, guest lists, cost and gifts, all of which were meaningful symbols of diplomacy, society and power.

It bears some similarity to planning today’s meals, whether for a head of state, a wedding or a family putting together Shabbat dinner.

The center of the exhibit brings visitors to one lengthy banquet table; one half is a repository for the numerous clay trays, bowls of different sizes and vessels that would have been used in ancient times to host a sizable feast. On the other end, Goshen offers a nod to the similarities between ancient and modern feasts, symbolized by a table set with Israel’s official Foreign Ministry silverware and gold-rimmed white china, stamped with the dark blue symbol of the menorah.

As a footnote and modern commentary to the exhibit, Goshen placed a lace-up oxford shoe at the bottom of the banquet table, mimicking the replica of a brogue used by chef Moshe Segev to serve dessert at a 2018 dinner hosted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to then-Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe.

Segev created the shoe-shaped dessert vessel as a creative addition to the dinner, but while the Japanese prime minister smiled at the time, he was supposedly secretly offended, as his culture is one where shoes are left at the door and definitely not put on a table.

The piece’s message? Always consider who your guests are when inviting them for dinner.

The Feast, open until December 31, 2023.

At Holon’s “Food” exhibit, three sets of curators set out to make visitors think about what they eat, and why. The exhibit is divided into three sections, one examining the future of water, another looking at the relationship between humans and food, and the third on food color.

The museum staff recommended starting with the water-focused gallery, which includes a “Waterfalls II” pump installation by artist Sigalit Landau, another one about turning Coca-Cola back into clean drinking water, and comparisons between a water vessel created for home design store Tollman’s and a fourth-century otter flask.

All of these provoke thoughts about water and sustainability, but are perhaps best saved for last, after viewing the other two galleries. The main gallery on the second floor, curated by Liora Rosin and Dana Benshalom, offers a better introduction to the entire exhibit. It displays an extensive array of videos, vitrines and art examining the dynamic relationship between humans and food and looking at how we relate to our sustenance through all our senses.

There are creations from artists and designers the world over who consider what makes certain foods iconic — from hummus to Pringles to sushi — along with how we prepare our food, eat it and relate to it.

While so much of the food displayed in sculpture, photography and video is very familiar, the artists and curators push the audience to consider different versions of the dishes at hand, rethinking some favorite foods and how or why we eat them.

Downstairs is the third section of the overall exhibit, “Colored,” curated by Lior Hermoni, which explores the role of food colors and how our vision interprets our food intake. It’s perhaps the most visually gripping section of the exhibit, examining why certain colors feel acceptable and others do not.

There are striking vitrines of foods arranged according to color, such as a collection of familiar red foods in one box, an explanation as to why blue foods are less acceptable in society, and a “pantry” of food colorings produced synthetically and organically.

And for some fun viewing, a series of videos by Jenny van Sommers and Bompas & Parr of shows colorful shimmering Jell-O molds in motion.

Jessica Steinberg