Tasty Pleasure : The american Museum Of Natural History's 'Chocolate' Show Is chock-full of Empty Calories
The "Chocolate" exhibition at the american Museum of Natural History ( on view till Sept. 4 ) isno surprisea trifle. It melts in your mouth, not in your brain. Charmingly undemanding ( if pricey at $17 a pop ), it is the throwaway summer hit of museum exhibits, a prescribed moneymaker aimed at the sweet-toothed infant in us all.
And here I must admit that I am that babe. After following the floor stickers ( "This way to Chocolate!" ) to a Wonka-esque gold-scripted arch, I found myself winding thru a maze of history litejust enough info to get it, nothing too taxingdutifully taking notes but with one thought pulsing within my little lizard brain : At the end of this exhibit, there's a chocolate cafeteria. A chocolate cafeteria. A dark chocolate cafeteria. Round the time Spain was spreading the sweet stuff from the Mayans to Europe, I gave in and cheated.
I scuttled thru the exhibit, past the antique candy wrappers, and got a huge bar of organic dark chocolate. Then I snuck back to the start. Now, speaking precisely, this is illegaland damn it, I support following the guidelines. No-one wants visitors smearing Mars bars on the museum's pristine glass cases. But as a critic, I believed it was critical that I'm employed with all my senses.
Loaded up on the sweet stuff, I realized that the exhibit does indeed cover the basics. You have got your wrinkly cocoa pods, your Mayan pottery, your business history of the cocoa trade ( with a pleasant focus on social justice ). You've got your shocking pellet of 1,500-year-old chocolate. Better yet , you've got your photo of an immense Easter bunny, circa 1890. 5 feet tall, the rabbit possesses the chalky grace of an Egyptian sarcophagus, and it stands, golemlike, beside it is its creator, Robert L. Strohecker. The label reveals that Strohecker is "the 'father ' of the chocolate Easter bunny"pretty much the best epithet one could hope for in this life.
Some of the exhibit's historic sections were a little on the obscure side. "Nearly 100 years passed before other European states caught the chocolate craze," read one display's label. "Were the Spanish attempting to keep chocolate to themselves? And how did reports of chocolate spread? We're not sure." But there's just enough setting to keep an intellectual candy-lover occupied. Among stuff I learned without targeting too intently : The ancient Mayans offered the god Quetzalcoatl ritual chocolate that was "a deep blood-red color." By 1930, there were forty thousand different sorts of chocolate bars. Chocolate contains the love-chemical phenylethylamine. ( Though the placard rather primly contended that there's "no definitive proof it excites the libido." ) And don't feed your dog chocolateit can be fatal, and it is a waste of good chocolate.
At one or two junctures, the facts-to-dramatics proportion dipped too low for even phenylethylamine-addled me. In one alcove, visitors find a production screen displaying the swirly legend "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." This silent-movie caption is immediately followed by a video illustration : a giant brown tongue of softened chocolate pours down from the pinnacle of the screen, followed by a spinning drift of sugar. Then the solemn words appear again : "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." That's the whole extent of the display.
More successful is the panoply of defunct candy wrappers, each beaming promises of delight. "Keep the party perkin '! Woman, take a bow! Serve 'em nuggets, serve 'em chips! Amazing and wow!" reads one. Taken together, the wrappers form a record of cultural trends, from Brach's Swingtime ( named after the dance craze ) to the Mr. Massive Shaq Snaq ( named after the rings player ). There's also a telephone-shaped chocolate mould, a hand-carved coffin in the form of a cocoa pod, and a dispensing machine that once dispensed Hershey bars for a penny each. There isn't much sociological depth hereI found myself brooding about oddball subjects the curators might have covered, like the way chocolate imagery has been used to refer to black skin or the whole Cathy cartoon idea that ladies have some special biological need for chocolate, but a few of these tchotchkes are fun to take a look at.
Still, listening to my fellow exhibit-goers was often more entertaining than gazing at one more cocoa pod. Of course , this is a subject on which everybody is an expert. "I'd like to live in a chocolate house!" blurted out one thirtysomething fellow. A couple to my left commenced earnestly debating the difference between hot cocoa and hot chocolate. And a bescarved French matron, gazing up at an enormous screen displaying a minidocumentary about the modern producing process, commenced reminiscing in great detail about the famous I like Lucy chocolate-making scene.
And here I must admit that I am that babe. After following the floor stickers ( "This way to Chocolate!" ) to a Wonka-esque gold-scripted arch, I found myself winding thru a maze of history litejust enough info to get it, nothing too taxingdutifully taking notes but with one thought pulsing within my little lizard brain : At the end of this exhibit, there's a chocolate cafeteria. A chocolate cafeteria. A dark chocolate cafeteria. Round the time Spain was spreading the sweet stuff from the Mayans to Europe, I gave in and cheated.
I scuttled thru the exhibit, past the antique candy wrappers, and got a huge bar of organic dark chocolate. Then I snuck back to the start. Now, speaking precisely, this is illegaland damn it, I support following the guidelines. No-one wants visitors smearing Mars bars on the museum's pristine glass cases. But as a critic, I believed it was critical that I'm employed with all my senses.
Loaded up on the sweet stuff, I realized that the exhibit does indeed cover the basics. You have got your wrinkly cocoa pods, your Mayan pottery, your business history of the cocoa trade ( with a pleasant focus on social justice ). You've got your shocking pellet of 1,500-year-old chocolate. Better yet , you've got your photo of an immense Easter bunny, circa 1890. 5 feet tall, the rabbit possesses the chalky grace of an Egyptian sarcophagus, and it stands, golemlike, beside it is its creator, Robert L. Strohecker. The label reveals that Strohecker is "the 'father ' of the chocolate Easter bunny"pretty much the best epithet one could hope for in this life.
Some of the exhibit's historic sections were a little on the obscure side. "Nearly 100 years passed before other European states caught the chocolate craze," read one display's label. "Were the Spanish attempting to keep chocolate to themselves? And how did reports of chocolate spread? We're not sure." But there's just enough setting to keep an intellectual candy-lover occupied. Among stuff I learned without targeting too intently : The ancient Mayans offered the god Quetzalcoatl ritual chocolate that was "a deep blood-red color." By 1930, there were forty thousand different sorts of chocolate bars. Chocolate contains the love-chemical phenylethylamine. ( Though the placard rather primly contended that there's "no definitive proof it excites the libido." ) And don't feed your dog chocolateit can be fatal, and it is a waste of good chocolate.
At one or two junctures, the facts-to-dramatics proportion dipped too low for even phenylethylamine-addled me. In one alcove, visitors find a production screen displaying the swirly legend "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." This silent-movie caption is immediately followed by a video illustration : a giant brown tongue of softened chocolate pours down from the pinnacle of the screen, followed by a spinning drift of sugar. Then the solemn words appear again : "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." That's the whole extent of the display.
More successful is the panoply of defunct candy wrappers, each beaming promises of delight. "Keep the party perkin '! Woman, take a bow! Serve 'em nuggets, serve 'em chips! Amazing and wow!" reads one. Taken together, the wrappers form a record of cultural trends, from Brach's Swingtime ( named after the dance craze ) to the Mr. Massive Shaq Snaq ( named after the rings player ). There's also a telephone-shaped chocolate mould, a hand-carved coffin in the form of a cocoa pod, and a dispensing machine that once dispensed Hershey bars for a penny each. There isn't much sociological depth hereI found myself brooding about oddball subjects the curators might have covered, like the way chocolate imagery has been used to refer to black skin or the whole Cathy cartoon idea that ladies have some special biological need for chocolate, but a few of these tchotchkes are fun to take a look at.
Still, listening to my fellow exhibit-goers was often more entertaining than gazing at one more cocoa pod. Of course , this is a subject on which everybody is an expert. "I'd like to live in a chocolate house!" blurted out one thirtysomething fellow. A couple to my left commenced earnestly debating the difference between hot cocoa and hot chocolate. And a bescarved French matron, gazing up at an enormous screen displaying a minidocumentary about the modern producing process, commenced reminiscing in great detail about the famous I like Lucy chocolate-making scene.