Museum of Food and Drink to Launch African/American: Making the Nation’s Table

Harlem, NY – The Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD), the museum that brings the world of food to life with exhibits you can taste, touch and smell, will launch its newest exhibition, African/American: Making the Nation’s Table at The Africa Center in late February 2020, MOFAD and The Africa Center leadership announced today. 

Curated by Dr. Jessica B. Harris, widely considered the world’s foremost expert on the foods of the African Diaspora, the exhibition will be the country’s first to celebrate the countless black chefs, farmers, and food and drink producers who have laid the foundation for American food culture —recognition that is long overdue.

“The goal of African/American is really two-fold; to create a deep appreciation for the profound impact that African Americans have had on American cuisine, and to bring diverse audiences together around a table to celebrate our shared culinary identity,” said Peter J. Kim, Executive Director of the Museum of Food and Drink. “We are profoundly grateful to The Africa Center for providing us the space and the guidance to share these absolutely crucial, undersung stories.”

Highlighting the influence of African culture throughout the world, and particularly in New York City, is a central focus of The Africa Center’s mission. This exhibition recognizes the deep African and African American contributions to this aspect of American culture and way of life, and the deep impact the Diaspora has had on the wider American experience of food and culture.

“Through the Diaspora, many African traditions have permeated societies on every continent, often in unknown or unacknowledged ways,” said Uzodinma Iweala, CEO of The Africa Center. “We are excited that this will be the first exhibition in our new space as we partner with MoFaD and invite the public to experience how African food customs intersect with African American and American culinary practices.”

“In the 400-plus years since enslaved Africans first arrived on the North American continent, African Americans have been the bedrock of American cuisine,” said Dr. Jessica B. Harris. “For centuries, we worked the fields, harvested the crops, wrote the recipes, brewed the beer, distilled the whiskey, cooked the food, set the table, served the food, cleared the table, and emptied the chamber-pots. In so doing, we made this nation's table -- and our influence continues today.”

Visitors to African/American will first encounter the massive Legacy Quilt, which will be composed of 400 blocks, each one representing the story of one African American culinary innovator. The quilt is being hand-stitched by Harlem Needle Arts, a diasporic quilting collective based in Harlem, using historically appropriate fabrics. Visual artist Adrian Franks, a multi-hyphenate creative who has worked with Spike Lee and Michael Jackson, will illustrate it. 

While the Legacy Quilt will show the breadth of African American contributions to American food, the exhibition will center around four particular stories, one for each of the four centuries that have passed since the first arrival of enslaved Africans in North America:  

Enslaved rice farmers, whose expertise and labor established rice agriculture in the US;

James Hemings, the enslaved chef of Thomas Jefferson who popularized French food in the United States; 

Nathan “Nearest” Green, who taught a young Jack Daniel how to distill whiskey; and

Leah Chase, the queen of Creole cuisine whose restaurant, Dooky Chase, provided the table from which participants in the civil rights movement ate, relaxed, and strategized.

Anchoring African/American will be the Ebony Test Kitchen, the psychedelic staple of black home cooking in the mid-20th Century from which Ebony Magazine tested recipes for its iconic ‘Date with a Dish’ column, from oyster gumbo to sweet potato pudding.  

Run by the first and only African American food editor at a major magazine, Ebony celebrated and helped popularize African American food as American food.  The kitchen was almost destroyed when its home, the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, was torn down.  MOFAD won a competitive bid for the kitchen, preserving this piece of classic African Americana– and hopes to take it on tour to centers of African American life across the country, from Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia to New Orleans and Memphis.  

Legendary musician and tastemaker Questlove will curate the music for the kitchen, while videos of Ebony editors talking about the kitchen will give visitors a more profound first-person understanding of its cultural importance. 

No visit to a Museum of Food and Drink exhibition would be complete without breaking bread. Chef Carla Hall,  Top Chef and former co-host of The Chew on ABC, will curate a tasting inspired by the story of the “shoebox lunch”. During the Great Migration, many African American travelers were refused food service. They would pack shoeboxes with food as the only certain source of sustenance for the trip. MOFAD’s tasting will use the shoebox lunch as a symbol of culture, connection, and the spread of African American culinary identity across the country. 

MOFAD is raising funds to help support this critical storytelling around how African Americans have profoundly impacted the American table.  A Kickstarter campaign, launched in mid-October, aims to raise $150,000 by November.   

As the most universal aspect of human existence, food is a powerful lens for understanding each other and the world around us. MOFAD is a new kind of museum that uses this power to create cultural change toward a more thoughtful, caring, and delicious future. 

MOFAD has drawn accolades for its innovative exhibits and programs, including its explosive first exhibition, BOOM! The Puffing Gun and the Rise of Cereal, which featured a 3,200-pound breakfast cereal-puffing machine, and MOFAD Roundtable, its ongoing series of debates on food issues such as the future of meat and the role of GMOs in food. 

The most recent exhibition, Chow: Making the Chinese American Restaurant, celebrated the birth and evolution of Chinese American restaurants, sparking conversation around immigration, cultural identity, and what it means to be American.

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About MOFAD

The Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that is launching the world’s first large-scale food museum with exhibits you can eat. Its mission is to change the way people think about food and inspire day-to-day curiosity about what we eat and why. MOFAD has drawn accolades for its innovative exhibits and programs, including its explosive first exhibition, BOOM! The Puffing Gun and the Rise of Cereal, which featured a 3,200-pound breakfast cereal-puffing machine, and MOFAD Roundtable, its ongoing series of debates on food issues such as the future of meat and the role of GMOs in food.

About The Africa Center

The Africa Center is transforming the world’s understanding of Africa, its Diaspora and the role of people of African descent in the world. Serving as the hub for the exchange of ideas around culture, business and policy as related to the continent, and in the spirit of collaboration and engagement with individuals and institutions who share the Center’s values, The Africa Center inspires enthusiasm, advances thought and action around Africa’s global influence and impact on our collective futures. The Africa Center’s physical presence on Fifth Avenue at the intersection of Harlem and the Museum Mile embodies the dynamism and diversity of Africa and its Diaspora in the heart of New York City. Learn more by visiting www.theafricacenter.org.