Collections Only

Gilcrease Museum is temporarily closed for construction.

Get the Full Story
Home / Exhibitions

Chocolate: The Exhibition

October 9, 2016 - January 8, 2017
Chocolate: The Exhibition
John Mix Stanley, Scouts in the Tetons, ca. 1855, detail, oil on canvas, GM 0126.1143
Sweet chocolate candy is a rather recent invention–it made its debut in 1847. Before that, solid chocolate was both gritty and greasy.<br/> Credit: © 2002 Photodisc
In the center of each pod sits 30 to 50 almond-sized seeds. One pod can produce about seven milk chocolate candy bars!<br/> Credit: Lindt & Sprungli, Switzerland
Cacao pulp tastes faintly of citrus and is the consistency of a pear.<br/> Credit: images used with permission of Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate, Incorporated
Brightly colored cacao pods are about the same size and shape as small footballs, and contain the source of chocolate–cacao seeds.<br/> Credit: © Robin Foster, The Field Museum
Before chocolate was a sweet candy, it was a spicy drink. Some of the earliest known chocolate drinkers were the ancient Maya of Central America.<br/> Credit: photography © Justin Kerr
Cacao was vital to the trade empire of the Aztec people—as a luxury drink, as money, and as an offering to the gods.<br/> Credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum
The Spaniards invented wooden stirring sticks called molinillos to create froth on top of their chocolate drink.<br/> Credit: © The Field Museum, A113766c, Mark Widhalm
By the 1800s, new innovations and mass production made solid chocolate candy affordable to a much broader public.<br/> Credit: Archives Menier/photo: R. Jeetelle, courtesy Nestle, France SAS
Varieties of cacao seeds from around the world are held in copper kettles until the candy manufacturer blends them into different kinds of chocolate.<br/> Credit: © Edward Rozzo/Corbis
While machines have made chocolate faster to produce and cheaper to buy, cacao farming itself remains basically unaltered.<br/> Credit: images used with permission of Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate, Incorporated
Many Mexican communities have a local grinder who will process residents’ cacao seeds, corn, and chilies into a fine powder.<br/> Credit: © 2002 The Field Museum, Teresa Murray
Mexicans and Mexican Americans sometimes mix corn, rice, and other ingredients with their chocolate (just like the Maya and Aztec) to make a drink called atole (Ah TOLE ay).<br/> Credit: © 2002 The Field Museum, Teresa Murray

Chocolate: The ExhibitionA unique tree in a lush tropical environment. A seed so precious it was used as money. A spicy drink and a sweet snack. A heavenly craving and a sublime pleasure.  Chocolate is all this … and much more.

Explore the relationship between human culture and this rainforest treasure in Chocolate: The Exhibition, Oct. 9, 2016 through Jan. 8, 2017 at Gilcrease Museum.

Chocolate will immerse you in a sweet experience, engage all your senses, and reveal facets of chocolate you may never have thought about before.  You’ll explore the plant, the products, the history, and the culture of chocolate through the lenses of botany and ecology, anthropology and economics, conservation and popular culture.

The ancient Maya of Central America knew it as a frothy, spicy drink, made from the seeds of the cacao tree and used in royal and religious ceremonies. But, because cacao grows only in the rainforest, it was coveted by other cultures — in particular, the Aztec. It soon became a valuable article of trade; the seeds served as a form of money, and the drink became a luxury for the elite, served in lavishly decorated vessels. When the first Europeans reached the Aztec capital, instead of gold they found treasure troves of cacao seeds.

The exhibition explores the commodification of chocolate by Europeans, and the use of slave labor on colonial plantations to meet the insatiable European demand for chocolate and its new soul mate, sugar.

Another fascinating part of the exhibition concerns the cacao tree itself (Theobroma cacao), its lowland rainforest ecology and how it’s grown today. A beautiful tree with delicate flowers, cacao grows only within 20° latitude (about 1,380 miles) of the equator.  It’s relatively small, no more than 30 or 40 feet high, and grows naturally in the rainforest understory, in the shade of larger, canopy trees.

Sustainable cacao-growing, environmental protections, and supporting the genetic diversity of wild cacao are increasingly important topics today, for economic as well as botanical reasons. Thanks to technological advances and mass production — not to mention enormous amounts of advertising — chocolate has become a part of the global market economy. Cacao seeds are traded on the commodities market (under the name “cocoa”), right along with pork bellies and soy. A futures stock ticker display in the exhibition brings this point home with a live display of current cocoa prices on the world market.

Even so, chocolate retains vestiges of its ceremonial history. Mexicans today use it as an offering on the Day of the Dead, in the form of beans or prepared as mole. Foil-wrapped chocolate coins are given to children as “Chanukah gelt.” And in the United States, of course, chocolate has a place in nearly every holiday celebration: heart-shaped boxes of chocolate for Valentine’s Day, chocolate bunnies for Easter, wrapped candies for trick-or-treaters at Halloween, and cups of hot cocoa to warm Christmas carolers.

Chocolate has its deepest cultural roots in places where it’s indigenous, like Mexico, and where it’s been turned into a commodity, like Europe and the U. S.

The value of chocolate can be measured in sales – $13 billion a year in the U.S. – or in symbols. In this country, for example, chocolate is closely linked not only with love but with patriotism: Chocolate has been issued to U.S. soldiers since World War I, and it has even accompanied astronauts into space.

chocolate_logo_nsf

These popular uses of chocolate, along with a fascinating array of chocolate advertising and packaging and a look at myths about chocolate, are all part of the Chocolate exhibition.

Chocolate and its national tour were developed by The Field Museum in Chicago. This project was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

Title sponsor of the Gilcrease Museum 2016 exhibition season is the Sherman E. Smith Family Charitable Foundation. Generous support is also provided by: Mervin Bovaird Foundation, C.W. Titus Foundation and M.V. Mayo Charitable Foundation.

Glacier Confection is Gilcrease Museum’s local partner for Chocolate: The Exhibition.

Several programs have been planned to augment the exhibition including opening weekend lectures, a chocolate-making demonstration, a special chocolate-themed dinner with wine pairings and an after-hours program in October. See below for the full list of events.

Programs

Join us for these fun and educational programs celebrating Chocolate: The Exhibition.

October 7, 2016 – From My Point of View: Chocolate: The Exhibition
October 8, 2016 – Exhibition Lecture: Chocolate
October 16, 2016 – Funday Sunday
October 28, 2016 – Gilcrease After Hours: When Chocolate Meets Coffee
November 4, 2016 – Chocolate Exhibition Wine Dinner
November 12 & 13, 2016 – Chocolate: Bus Trip and Tour
November 19, 2016 – Chocolate Fun
December 4, 2016 – Sunday Matinee Film: Chocolat

Save