The table. We eat our food seated at it. We put our feet on it. Perhaps we even bang our fists into it. We put a tablecloth on it and lay it nicely. Big decisions are made across it, and many earn their living sitting at it. However, we do not actually see it. Yet the table is a central element in our everyday life – as it is in visual art, where the table is a conspicuous element in portraits, interiors, genre pictures, and still lifes.
12 May 2017 – 27 August 2017 | Skagens Museum
The exhibition “At the table – People, food & nature morte” collocates works not previously shown together from the Dutch Golden Age to the present, focusing on human activities centred around the table and the things we put on it. It is not simply about enjoying the pleasures of the table, but also about its significance for identity and gender, fellowship and family, food culture and good manners, among other things.
Among the gems presented at the exhibition are works by Peder Severin Krøyer, Vilhelm Hammershøi, P.C. Skovgaard, Anna and Michael Ancher, Kristian Zahrtmann, Harald Slott-Møller, Edvard Weie and Olaf Rude, Niels Strøbek and Jesper Christiansen, Jan de Bray, the Netherlands, Hans Baluschek, Germany, and Odilon Redon, France.
The exhibition is a collaborative project with Fuglsang Kunstmuseum. Fuglsang Kunstmuseum hosted the exhibition from 27 January – 23 April, 2017. The two hosting museums have published a richly illustrated catalogue in conjunction with the university publishing house Aarhus University Press in which the museums themselves and external researchers outline new perspectives on the role of the table in visual art.
