SEATTLE, WA.- The Seattle Art Museum is presenting Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism. Farm to Table showcases over 50 works by noted Impressionist artists such as Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Eva Gonzalès, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir and explores the intersections of art, gastronomy, and national identity in late 19th-century France. This exhibition is organized by The American Federation of Arts (AFA) in collaboration with The Chrysler Museum of Art, curated by Andrew Eschelbacher, Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and adapted for a unique presentation at the Seattle Art Museum by Theresa Papanikolas, SAM’s Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art. This presentation of Farm to Table is the only West Coast showing and the final stop on the exhibition’s national tour.

“I can think of no better place than Seattle, a city known for its diverse culinary scene and commitment to sustainable sourcing, for this exhibition,” said Scott Stulen, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. “We look forward to welcoming visitors to this exhibition, which will be a feast for the eyes and an invitation to embrace creativity and meaning in food.”

The Seattle presentation includes works unique to SAM including Claude Monet’s Fishing Boats at Étretat from the museum’s collection. SAM also presents a conversation/visitor response "dining table" in the gallery, which offers guests the opportunity to reflect and converse with prompts provided specifically to stimulate discussion and curiosity. The additional dimension provides a dedicated channel to express the communal and conversational elements inherent to food in a shared space, echoing the human element these French painters strove to capture in their work.

“We are thrilled to present an exhibition that pairs the pleasures of art and food,” said Papanikolas. “Visitors will discover how beloved Impressionists brought France’s culinary traditions to life on canvas and in other mediums. Each work invites us into a unique food story, from production and preparation to consumption, and shows how a nation in flux forged its modern identity around the shared experience of food.”

The cuisine of France has long been a marker of the country’s strength and prestige, especially as it grappled with political instability and shifting social dynamics following the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. In this climate, France’s culinary traditions signaled its refinement, fortitude, and ingenuity while they also exposed fractures that destabilized national identity. From cultivation to consumption, food was central to notions of glory but also to those of collective struggle.

Through paintings of landscapes, market and cafe scenes, still lifes, and vivid genre scenes, as well as several sculptures, Farm to Table explores how Impressionist artists depicted the preparation, processing, commerce, consumption and absence of food to reflect the social and economic realities of the period. Organized into five sections, following food from cultivation on the farm to the marketplace to the dining table, these works highlight the evolving norms of gender and class; the tenuous relationship between Paris and the provinces, and the colonies; and shifting understandings of science and the environment.

Depictions of markets and gardens, farmers, chefs, and restaurants expressed cultural anxieties and aspirations. Beginning with the 1870 Prussian siege of Paris (and the resultant food crisis) and continuing through the 1890s, the exhibition spans the age of Impressionism and provides a new way to consider the era’s depictions of modern life at the intersection of art, food, and social politics.