Food for Thought

The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden is pleased to present Food for Thought, the thirteenth annual Sheldon Statewide exhibition. Sheldon Statewide is a unique collaboration between the Sheldon Gallery, the Nebraska Art Association (a nonprofit volunteer membership organization dedicated to the advancement of the visual arts in Nebraska) and the efforts and cooperation of the many Nebraska communities that serve as exhibition venues. The mission of the Sheldon Gallery is the acquisition, exhibition, and interpretation of 19th-20th-century American art. Sheldon Gallery has achieved a national reputation for this collection. Each year twenty works from this collection are circulated throughout the state of Nebraska. The 1999-2000 Sheldon Statewide exhibition focuses on a popular yet powerful subject for artist in the Western artistic tradition. Food for Thought assembles a diverse group of artists, working from diverse perspectives and with diverse intentions, who have chosen to represent food. Food is the very stuff of life, it nourishes us, sustains us, even gives us pleasure. However, in the hands of artists, food is transformed aesthetically and imbued with added meaning and significance. The representation of food in the Western artistic tradition has served a variety of symbolic purposes. First and foremost is the representation of the material beauty of the world around us, a beauty that has intrigued and seduced artists for centuries. Second, some artists have represented this material beauty in order to emphasize its transient nature, thus serving to redirect attention from the temporal pleasures of this world for the presumably more enduring concern of one\u27s soul