the dining room project – call for proposals and participation! deadline january 25, 2011

THE DINING ROOM PROJECT: Intersections of Food, Art, and the Rituals of Eating is a collaborative project initiated by the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art (KCJMCA), which will include exhibitions at Urban Culture Project’s Paragraph Gallery (A Potluck Smorgasbord; March 18-May 7, 2011) and KCJMCA’s Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom (March 20-May 15, 2011).  With this project, the traditions, rituals, structures, and conviviality of the dining room become a platform for the exploration of issues such as hunger, sustainability, public health, consumption, the origins of food, its history of cultural symbolism, and its ever-evolving role as a vehicle for communication, community-building, and creative expression.

The participation of artists, designers, historians, scholars, educators, planners, farmers, gardeners, activists, chefs, caterers, foodies, foragers, and other creative people of all kinds is invited. Each exhibition will center around a 16-foot dining room table, created by artist Peter Warren.  At and around these tables a series of participant-driven activities, events, and meals will unfold. Proposals are invited for multiple aspects of these exhibitions, including: THE HARVEST (at Paragraph): soliciting, collecting, organizing, displaying and/or otherwise considering the canned goods and other non-perishables to be gathered on behalf of Harvesters food bank; THE TABLE (at Paragraph): the creation of individual place settings, to displayed on the dinner table and appropriate for use;  THE SMORGASBORD (at Paragraph + Epsten Gallery): activities of all kinds to take place during the course of the exhibitions that relate to, are inspired by, and/or will center around the dining room table, including lectures, discussions, presentations, demonstrations, workshops, temporary installations, live performances, readings, potluck dinners, off-site excursions, etc. Submissions of personally, culturally, or creatively significant recipes and/or personal photographs or videos of memorable dinners and dining-related activities and experiences for public display in THE KITCHEN (at Paragraph) are also invited.

Click here to download the complete call for proposals and participation, including much more information about The Dining Room Project. Proposals are due Tuesday, January 25, 2011.