The Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) is a New York City educational non-profit and museum that seeks to change the way people think about food and drink. The museum's work explores "the ways food and beverage impact our culture, politics, economy, history, and more. [1] " [2]
Dave Arnold founded and chartered the museum in 2005, but it remained an idea until 2011. [3] In 2013, Arnold and museum Executive Director Peter Kim raised over $100,000 through a Kickstarter campaign for the museum's first exhibition. [4]
The first exhibit, which debuted in New York in August 2013, was the result of the campaign: a 3,200 pound puffing machine, also called a puff gun. The puffing machine is part of a cereal-focused traveling exhibit. [5] [6]
In 2015, the museum gained the support of its first major sponsor, Infiniti, which helped fund a space for their first series of exhibitions. [7] [8] That space became known as MOFAD Lab, a 5,000-square-foot gallery space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shutdown of museums in New York City, including the MOFAD Lab, MOFAD announced a new exhibition entitled African/American: Making the Nation's Table, exhibited at the Africa Center's Aliko Dangote Hall in Harlem, NYC. [9] [10] The museum held a series of public programs during the shutdown, and the exhibit ultimately opened in February 2022 and included the Ebony Test Kitchen. [11] [12] [13] [14]
In February 2024, MOFAD opened its doors to the public once more at its new location in the Empire Stores building in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. MOFAD's inaugural exhibit, Flavor: The World to your Brain,is an interactive sensory exhibition exploring the many aspects of how people experience flavor, a look at the flavor industry, and an examination of what natural and artificial flavor really mean.
General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company originally gained fame for being a large flour miller. Today, the company markets many well-known North American brands, including Gold Medal flour, Annie's Homegrown, Lärabar, Cascadian Farm, Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Nature Valley, Totino's, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, Häagen-Dazs, as well as breakfast cereals under the General Mills name, including Cheerios, Wheaties, Chex, Lucky Charms, Trix, Cocoa Puffs and Count Chocula and the other monster cereals.
Lois Mailou Jones (1905–1998) was an artist and educator. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Muscarelle Museum of Art, and The Phillips Collection. She is often associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. (JPC) was an American publishing company founded in November 1942 by African-American businessman John H. Johnson. It was headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. JPC was privately held and run by Johnson until his death in 2005. His publications "forever changed the popular representation of African Americans." The writing portrayed African Americans as they saw themselves and its photojournalism made history. Led by its flagship publication, Ebony, Johnson Publishing was at one time the largest African-American-owned publishing firm in the United States. JPC also published Jet, a weekly news magazine, from November 1951 until June 2014, when it became digital only. In the 1980s, the company branched into film and television.
Reese's Puffs is a corn-based breakfast cereal manufactured by General Mills inspired by Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. At its launch in May 1994 the cereal consisted of corn puffs flavored with chocolate and peanut butter. Later, the formula was revised to be a mixture of chocolate puffs and peanut butter puffs.
Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Thomas's collage work is inspired from popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, the Harlem Renaissance, and selected works by the Afro-British painter Chris Ofili. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art, and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.
Dave Arnold is the founder and president of the Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD); the host of the radio show Cooking Issues; an owner of Booker and Dax, a food and drink research lab in New York; a food science writer and editor; the author of Liquid Intelligence: The Art & Science of the Perfect Cocktail; and an innovator in the field of culinary technology.
Ebony Grace Patterson is a Jamaican-born visual artist and educator. She is known for her large and colorful tapestries created out of various materials such as, glitter, sequins, fabric, toys, beads, faux flowers, jewelry, and other embellishments. Her "Gangstas for Life series" of dancehall portraits, and her garden-inspired installations.
Jules Allen is an American photographer, author, and educator. He is known for his photographs of African-American culture. He is an emeritus professor of Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York, where he has taught for two decades in the art and photography department.
Betty Blayton was an American activist, advocate, artist, arts administrator and educator, and lecturer. As an artist, Blayton was an illustrator, painter, printmaker, and sculptor. She is best known for her works often described as "spiritual abstractions". Blayton was a founding member of the Studio Museum in Harlem and board secretary, co-founder and executive director of Harlem Children's Art Carnival (CAC), and a co-founder of Harlem Textile Works. She was also an advisor, consultant and board member to a variety of other arts and community-based service organizations and programs. Her abstract methods created a space for the viewer to insert themselves into the piece, allowing for self reflection, a central aspect of Blayton's work.
Nesquik is a brand of food products made by Swiss company Nestlé. In 1948, Nestlé launched a drink mix for chocolate-flavored milk called Nestlé Quik in the United States; this was released in Europe during the 1950s as Nesquik.
Shantell Martin is a British visual artist, intuitive philosopher, cultural facilitator, teacher, choreographer, songwriter, performer, and more. Best known for her large scale, black-and-white line drawings, she performs many of her drawings for a live audience. Born in Thamesmead, London, Martin lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. Along with exhibitions and commission for museums and galleries, Martin frequently collaborates with international commercial projects, both private and public.
Perry Chen is an American entrepreneur best known for being the creator and principal founder of Kickstarter, the online crowdfunding platform for creative projects. He came up with the idea for Kickstarter in 2001 and launched it in 2009 along with co-founders Charles Adler and Yancey Strickler.
Arnold J. Kemp is an American artist who works in painting, print, sculpture, and poetry. After graduating from Boston Latin School, Kemp received a BA/BFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and an MFA from Stanford University.
Freestyle was a contemporary art exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem from April 28-June 24, 2001 curated by Thelma Golden with the support of curatorial assistant Christine Y. Kim. Golden curated the works of 28 emerging black artists for the exhibition, characterizing the work as 'Post-Black'. The latter is a term she generated along with artist Glenn Ligon as a genre of art "that had ideological and chronological dimensions and repercussions. It was characterized by artists who were adamant about not being labeled as 'black' artists, though their work was steeped, in fact deeply interested, in redefining complex notions of blackness." Freestyle was her first major project at The Studio Museum in Harlem and the first of an ongoing series of 'F' themed exhibitions including Frequency, Flow and Fore. The most recent iteration of the series was 2017's Fictions.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed is an American writer, educator, and artist from East Palo Alto, California. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts known for her work in installations, book arts, immersive text-based installations, large-scale public text pieces, publications, collage, and audio recordings. Rasheed's art explores memory, ritual, discursive regimes, historiography, and archival practices through the use of fragments and historical residue. Based in Brooklyn, NY, she is currently the Arts Editor for SPOOK magazine. In 2021 her work was featured in an Art 21 documentary, "The Edge of Legibility."
Janet Henry is a visual artist based in New York City.
Cheryl R. Riley is an American artist and furniture designer. Her official website is cherylrriley.com/
Peter J. Kim is an American food museum director and social entrepreneur. He served as the Founding Director of the Museum of Food and Drink, a nonprofit museum in Brooklyn, New York. Kim is the host and creator of Counterjam, a food and music podcast on the Food52 Podcast Network.
Rico Gatson is a multidisciplinary artist working in Brooklyn, New York, whose work draws from his African-American background. Through his art, he provides social commentary on significant moments in African-American history. His work combines abstract patterns with vibrant colors, which creates confrontational work that references African American culture and history.
Kenneth Victor Young (1933–2017), was an American artist, educator, and designer. He is associated with the Washington Color School art movement. He worked at the Smithsonian Institution as an exhibit designer for 35 years.
