May 12–October 14, 2018

Community Arts Initiative: Endless Feast

Kids collaborate to create a surreal, epic, endless feast

Over a seven-month period, young artists from the Museum’s ten Community Arts Initiative (CAI) partners in the Boston area collaborated with artist Rhonda Weppler to create a large-scale installation that explores the interconnection of food and culture.

“Endless Feast” presents a banquet of infinite scale, a surreal, epic, endless feast. Using candy, chocolate, icing, fondant, and food-safe silicone molds, the young artists made a variety of miniature tableware and food items, finding inspiration in objects from the MFA’s collection as well as in dishes enjoyed by their own culturally diverse families, such as Chinese egg tarts, Salvadorian enchiladas, and Jamaican rice and beans. Weppler then photographed this cornucopia and modified it with Photoshop, producing a large-scale photomural receding into space.

As a counterpoint to the immense photomural, each child made a small sculpture of a meal that he or she had eaten the day before, some of which have been enlarged to life scale by Weppler.

“Endless Feast” invites us to reflect on the day-to-day lives of the young artists. How do the objects displayed in museums speak to powerful forces of history and social conventions of taste? What can they tell us about individuals who felt hunger, enjoyed good food, and shared meals just as we do?

“Endless Feast” marks the thirteenth year of the Community Arts Initiative, in which the Museum partners with community organizations to introduce kids ages 6 to 12 to the MFA’s collections and the art-making process. Through the CAI, the MFA is proud to partner with the Boys and Girls Club of Dorchester; West End House Boys and Girls Club of Allston-Brighton; United South End Settlements; Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center; Vine Street Community Center; and five Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston located in Blue Hill, Charlestown, Chelsea, Roxbury, and South Boston.

Learn more about the Community Arts Initiative

  • Edward H. Linde Gallery (Gallery 168)

Sponsors

The Community Arts Initiative is generously supported by the Linde Family Foundation.