In the span of a decade and a half since Instagram’s founding, the social media platform has propelled images to the forefront of our communications, where food is one of the most popular subjects. “Camera eats first” has become a cultural mainstay, and restaurants and influencers alike have gravitated toward and cashed in on the dramatic, atmospheric, and pretty presentations of food.

This phenomenon is not dissimilar to what happened in a different time and age, when such fine foods could only be enjoyed by the elite class, who prided themselves with the best taste—for both the food and the wares the food is served in, either for lavish parties or everyday meals. The various ceramic wares on view in Asia Society Museum’s (Re)Generations and Imperial Treasures exhibitions, and the exhibition Monstrous Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are examples of how global trade, imperialism, and the exchange of aesthetics all culminated in our current enjoyment and obsession of food content that is not necessarily edible.

Join Esther M. Choi, artist and author of Le Corbuffet, Iris Moon, curator of Monstrous Beauty, and Natasha Pickowicz, dessert chef and author of More than Cake, in a conversation moderated by Kelly Ma, Curator of Learning & Outreach at Asia Society Museum, to explore more into the world of art in food and its presentation.

Speakers

Esther M. Choi is an artist, scholar, and writer whose work blends photography, sculpture, and historical analysis to explore how visual frameworks shape our understanding of the (post)natural world. Choi’s Le Corbuffet (Prestel, 2019) retools food photography to critically examine cultural consumption and was a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Photography Award. Her writings have appeared in Artforum, E-flux, Art Papers, and Harvard Design Magazine. A Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow, Choi has taught at OCAD University and the Cooper Union. 

Iris Moon is Associate Curator in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she specializes in European ceramics and glass. She is the author of Melancholy Wedgwood (MIT Press, 2024), Luxury after the Terror (Penn State University Press, 2022) and coeditor with Richard Taws of Time, Media, and Visuality in Post-Revolutionary France (2021). In addition to curatorial work, she has taught at the Cooper Union.

Natasha Pickowicz is a New York City–based chef and writer. She is a four-time James Beard Foundation Award finalist. Much of her pastry work explores the relationship between baking and social justice, including ongoing collaborations with seminal New York City institutions like Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, God’s Love We Deliver, the Brigid Alliance, and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York. Pickowicz’s recipes and writing have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bon Appetit, Saveur, Food & Wine, New York magazine, Cherry Bombe, and many other publications.

Kelly Ma (moderator) is Curator, Learning & Outreach at Asia Society Museum in New York, where she is responsible for art- and exhibition-related public programs and museum educational initiatives. Before returning to Asia Society Museum where she held various programming roles since 2013, she served as guest curator of public programmes at M+ and deputy director at the nonprofit contemporary art center Para Site, both in Hong Kong, from 2021 to 2024. She has contributed her writings to Hidden Realms: Korean Artists Today (ArtAsiaPacific, 2024) and Great Women Painters (Phaidon, 2022).