Agriculture, a noble and necessary occupation, is also literally a dirty business and increasingly removed from post-industrial urban and suburban life. Leah Gauthier, by placing agriculture in a specifically cultural context—the museum —asks us to re-imagine the growing, harvesting, preparation and consumption of food so that we may re-connect with some of humanity’s most fundamental activities.

The museum in many ways is a scared space, a holy shrine of art in which people act differently, look at things with a fresh perspective, and often seek personal transformation. When these behaviors and attitudes, usually reserved for Art are brought to bear on Food, our relationships to what nourishes us can change. The beauty of plants and fruits is more manifest, mundane picking and cooking become performed and observed rituals, and eating can be a sacrament. A simple shift in physical context allows us to experience, if even fleetingly, a much older, and perhaps wiser, connection to nature and our physical being.—Nick Capasso, Curator, Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park