Good chefs will agree that most dishes require the perfect combination of a few select ingredients—whether traditional or experimental, and enthusiastically throwing in too many ingredients can often dilute the end results. Perhaps that same tendency is what led self-proclaimed food blog fanatic Chelsea Shannon to describe the flavor of the current exhibition at the Houston Center for Photography (HCP) as “unclear.” In her Glasstire review of See Food: Contemporary Photography and the Ways We Eat, she states that “the show reads like a smorgasbord of perspectives with no narrative binding it all together besides the fact that everything features food.”
Chef Monica Pope. Photo: Tam Vo/Houston Press
The curatorial smorgasbord approach also seems to have affected HCP’s programming. On January 7, HCP will host a panel discussion about “how the ways we see food in our everyday world are shifting due to emerging technology, new media and industry trends.” It’s a thought-provoking theme with an incredibly interesting variety of speakers, but with seven panelists, a moderator and the exhibition curator, it may prove too much to digest in one evening. Like the exhibition itself, there are fantastic ingredients that make the trip to HCP a must for art food lovers, but they could have made several tastier meals out of this.
Here is the lineup, which starts at 6 pm (and includes “light bites” courtesy of Sparrow Bar+Cookshop!):
See Food curator Natalie Zelt will give a tour of the exhibition starting promptly at 6 pm. Teresa Byrne-Dodge, publisher of My Table Magazine, will moderate the following panelists: Monica Pope, of Sparrow Bar+Cookshop; Jim Gossen, Chairman of Sysco Louisiana Seafood; Greg Morago, Food Editor for the Houston Chronicle; Scott Howard, Board President of Urban Harvest; Paula Murphy of Patterson & Murphy Public Relations (PR for food, restaurant and hospitality industries); Brooke Sinclair of the Houston Food Bank; and Chuck Cook, food photographer.
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