[Student Name]
HIST 542
20 January 2009
Review: Chocolate, The Exhibition
Motivated by a sweet-tooth and tasked with the assignment of reviewing an online exhibit, I stumbled upon Chicago’s Field Museum and its digital presentation of Chocolate, The Exhibition. The online exhibit is a follow-up and companion piece to a real-time offering installed in the museum in 2007. After the initial showing, Chocolate went on the road for a national tour. The online exhibit pulls the reader through page after page of decadent graphics, clean, easy text, and interesting side notes. As the reader dives deeper into the text, however, the richness of the web designs fades as the words fail to engage. Chocolate becomes a good example of an interesting subject, chosen perhaps to be provocative and for its rich programming possibilities, but short on critical analysis or lasting significance. It does, however, open the door for Public Historians to address important issues of audience, the treatment of controversial history, and balance.
The initial impression given an exhibit visitor is of rich promise. From its opening page, Chocolate tempts the visitor with “eye-candy.” Colors chosen are rich, deep, royal hues of green, brown and purple. Overlaid into that base are images of cocoa leaves, mortars and pestles, and royal chocolate molds, giving the reader a sneak-peek at the chronological explanations that are to follow. Text is then presented in white or pale yellow, complemented with one or two pictures per page. The mechanics of each page offer picture roll-over, links to other facets of the exhibit at the top of each page, and a link connecting the visitor to the next intended stop on the tour at the bottom of the page. The picture roll-over is a feature that provides a slightly enlarged rendering of the image on the page and a short caption. In cases where an artifact is pictured, the caption is followed by its provenance, a helpful tidbit for marketing the institution who owns the object and for serious researchers who may want to glean this exhibit for more information. Providing provenance also demonstrates collaboration between several museums in presenting this exhibit to the public. The links offered are also helpful. Once in the maze of the pages, the links at the top of each page allow the visitor to easily navigate away from a subject area, while the directional link at the bottom keeps the reader on the desired course if moving forward.
Once through the digital threshold of the exhibit, Chocolate moves in several directions. Satisfying the museum’s departments of exhibits, education, and marketing, the options include, All About Chocolate, Educator’s Resources, Planning Your Visit, Events & Programs, Chocolate Tour, Field Museum, and Credits. Focusing solely on the actual exhibit, All About Chocolate, the explorer enters and is introduced. “Journey through history to get the complete story behind the tasty treat that we crave in Chocolate,” greets the reader first.[1] Seven additional selections are provided to guide the reader to specific areas of interest, including 1) Growing Chocolate, 2) The History of Chocolate, 3) Eating Chocolate, 4) Making Chocolate, 5) The Chocolate Challenge, 6) Books, Films, Resources, and 7) Just for Kids. Each section reads like a textbook, following the time-honored tradition of chronological narrative. This simple approach to a subject hints at the reading level of the intended audience, a fact that seems evident at first, but becomes clouded as the reader moves on.
Audience for any interpretive writer is a difficult thing to pinpoint. In her book, Exhibit Labels, Beverly Serrell implores the writer to select a reading level that is not simplistic, but not written for experts in the field, either. “All labels should strive to be appealing and suited to as many visitors as possible, the casual tourist, the layperson interested in the subject as a hobby, the person whose job is related, the family group visiting to entertain the children, the new immigrant in the city.”[2] Chocolate initially seems to abide by this sage advice. The reading level is fairly low, perhaps too low for some of the adult audiences Serrell refers to. In fact, it seems to be written specifically for grade school children. While that ensures an exhibit is not missing out on a target audience, the simplicity of the text loses the adult reader’s interest fairly quickly. In some panels, Chocolate commits another offense in writing at two different reading levels. On the Growing Chocolate page, the text supports the initial claim of a very basic level, stating that “Thirty to 50 of these almond-sized seeds, covered in yummy pulp, sit nestled together.” Even without mentioning the numerical inconsistency, this suggests a reader of a very basic level. Just two pages away, however, the leading sentence referring to planting techniques reads, “Cross-pollination in the wild – and human intervention that created hybrids to improve cacao’s yield and disease resistance – has resulted in different varieties of cacao.” This language suggests a much higher understanding than “yummy.”
Added to the confusing language levels, are examples of differing age appropriateness in the graphics chosen to represent the text. On one page, an interactive game is offered that allows the visitor to look at two drawings and choose either binoculars or a microscope to examine the plant growth further, with the goal of finding cacao pods. This game is a fun, simple way to disembark from the generous text for just a moment, and seems to be directed at a very young exhibit visitor. On the other hand, just a few pages away is a picture of a European woman drinking chocolate in bed, with her gown draped as to expose her breast. This form of art expression, while popular in Europe during its time, may not be popular for the parents of the first grader who just finished finding the cacao pods without some explanation as to why the woman is uncovered. While the subject of nudity and spectatorship in art remains controversial for curators and patrons, it does have its place in history, and the fact that an art museum piece is featured in this exhibit is appreciated. However, the issue arises again in the tricky art of interpretation. If the language of our exhibit is going to assume that the reader, adult or child, struggles with complex meanings, then the caption on the picture should not assume an
in-depth knowledge of nudity in the history of French art.
The next section explored is the History of Chocolate. Here, the reader is introduced to the Mesoamerican cultures that valued cacao and the social, economic, and political impact it had on their interactions with each other and the Europeans. Mesoamerican-European interaction described in the exhibit text offers another opportunity to examine the reading level offered to the public, as well as another important topic that challenges contemporary Public Historians; controversial history. Movements in recent years have favored the telling of history from as many perspectives as possible, even when those stories may be unflattering to parties (usually whites) involved. W.E.B. DuBois is quoted in Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, “One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over.”[3] While Chocolate does address uncomfortable issues like conquering, slavery, and economic politics, it does so in a way that once again reflects an immature readership. The page titled A Spanish Conquest has this to say about how Europeans acquired cacao: “Contact between Spaniards and Aztecs opened a gateway for the exchange of ideas and technology – and a new European market for foods like cacao.” Again on the page introducing cacao as a European import, text reads “Europe’s first contact with chocolate came during the conquest of Mexico in 1521. The Spaniards recognized the value attached to cacao and observed the Aztec custom of drinking chocolate. Soon after, the Spanish began to ship cacao seeds back home.” While this account is not untrue, it glosses over an opportunity to educate more about the cultural upheaval taking place in Central America that enabled Spaniards to ship this seed home. If, indeed the intended reader is in grade school, then the full picture of violence, aggression, and disease is not appropriate, and yet, this account remains too, well, “vanilla.” To the exhibit’s credit, one picture, albeit a thumbnail, presented does depict a group of Spaniards hanging a Native in order to obtain his cacao.
The balance between offering a provocative subject and addressing controversial aspects of its history is difficult to achieve. Here Chocolate provides a splendid example. Because the sections are so thoughtfully divided and the presentation consistent, the meshing of different disciplines, including science, art, and history, is well-represented. The design, organization and flow of the narrative go a long way in redeeming its drawbacks. Touching on science, Chocolate gives a good overview on the cacao tree, its habitat, and its negative impact on rainforests. The section on manufacturing chocolate introduces the chemistry involved in transforming a liquid into a solid and heating and additive process using for creating different types of chocolate. Representing art are the various pictures that have been borrowed from other museums, including pieces from Oxford, the Newberry library, Museo de America, Madrid, and the Clark Collections of the Art Institute. Although the artifacts suffer the digital fate of being represented only in two dimensions, they represent an excellent variety of paintings, objects, drawings and photographs. This global offering further provides the exhibit visitor with a glimpse of the breadth of chocolate’s importance through the years for a number of cultures.
The resulting impact of Chocolate is positive despite minor shortcomings. It provides an excellent example of an exhibit with universal appeal, worldwide relevance, and ageless charm. The subsections cover a multitude of subjects, cross educational disciplines and tie chocolate to centuries of world history. Still, several lessons can be learned, including lost opportunity to tell the stories of minority constituencies and careful and consistent approach to audience. From the marketing standpoint of any cultural institution, thought, Chocolate is brilliant. It undoubtedly inspired people to venture into its fold because of the subject, and lends itself well to educational programming and future events. Fortunate also is the whimsical nature of the piece as evidenced in the books, films, and resources section. Here, the researcher can and does find scholarly works on the history of chocolate, but also finds popular references like the “Job Switching” episode of I Love Lucy and the recent film Chocolat, proving that we need not take ourselves too seriously in order to enjoy history. Overall, this exhibit is well-done and appealing. Its lack of critical analysis, even at an elementary level, however, makes it sweet to the tongue but empty calories.
[1] www.fieldmuseum.org/chocolate/history/ (accessed 01.18.2009)
[2] Serrell, Beverly. Exhibit Labels. (Rowman Altamira, 1996) 95.
[3] Loewen, James W. Lies my Teacher Told Me, Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. (New York, 1995) 18.
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